Electromagnetic Crunch
by InsaneShadowFan
Summary: A ten-year-old Yu-Gi-Oh fanatic and her anime-hating sister are sucked into the world of Duel Monsters and Shadow Games. Unknown to them is the fact that their doing so could potentially tear apart the fabric of both universes.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One: Lemons and Flames**

_Date Posted: _

_Disclaimer: YGO ain't mine, foo. _

o o o o o

On the overgrown yard of an ancient looking house, under a tree, a girl sat, reading a paperback book with a scarlet cover. A green lizard was printed on it, its tail wrapped around the title's gold letters.

The girl looked to be around thirteen or fourteen years old. She had a long mane of tangled brown hair. Her eyes were brown too, and her mouth was bent in a permanent frown. She was not plain, but very...not caring. It showed up in her appearance.

The door to the house burst open, and out came a middle-aged man who had blond (though greying) hair and blue eyes, donned in a business suit and looking rather flustered.

"Sarah!" he rambled out. "breakfast is in the kitchen make sure you pick up your sister's cards from the yard you don't want them to get wet and have her whine all day where the devil are my keys darnit I'm already late oh here they are bye Sarah!" the man was in his car and out the driveway as the girl muttered a "Goodbye" under her breath. Sticking a maple leaf in her book as a temporary bookmark, she stood up, brushed dirt off of her jeans, picked up the cards that were littered around the yard, tied a rubber band around them, and walked back into the house. It was Saturday, and her sister's favorite show was on. So, naturally, she simply had to wrestle the remote out from that girl's grimy little hands and watch MTV with a superior look on her face. That was expected of her. She _was _the older sister, you know.

The inside of the house, though less...shabby looking than the exterior, many snooty, well-to-do aristocrats would most likely have turned up their noses at the furnishings that had clearly been used, and never overstarched and left to become stuffy and dusty like _their_ living rooms, thank you very much. All over the place, there were little hints that there were signs of children around. A trading card here. An open fantasy novel lying on top of the television. Handmade candleholders, picture frames, the usual odds and ends that young children often made for their parents at school.

Hm...her sister wasn't on the couch as she usually was, guarding the remote from older siblings like a hawk would guard its eggs from predators. Sarah climbed up the stairs, knowing exactly what Mary was up to. She opened the door to her own room, where her computer was. There, her sister lay on the ground, her eyes shut tightly, as if it hurt horribly when she opened them.

Mary was a few years younger than Sarah, about ten. With a white-blond halo of hair and twinkling (though closed at the moment) blue eyes like her father, long spidery lashes, and fair skin, she was a very beautiful kid. More beautiful than her sister.

"Well hello there, Mary," Sarah said calmly while standing over her. Mary didn't reply with words, but whimpered and covered her eyes.

Sarah stared at her computer screen.

"You've been reading Yu-Gi-Oh smut again."

"My eyes hurt!"

Sarah sighed and leaned over to click out of the fanfiction site.

_Joey screamed in ecstacy as Seto pounded relentlessly into-_

She quickly closed the window. "You sick, sick little girl."

o o o o o

"Sarah, it's nearly eleven, can I watch TV now?" Mary asked her.

"No." Sarah nonchalantly flipped through the channels just to spite her, or so Mary thought.

Flip.

_"New clothes are FUN! But they won't save you any money on car in-"_

Flip.

_"-have been creating an odd electromagnetic disturbance in the area. Says Mr. Doberman of Greenville, age 63. Quote: "My granson was just channel surfin', or whatevah the young'uns call it. He wuz pressin' the remote clicker buttons real fast, and the TV started smokin'. Then I sees a s'plosion. I look back and my granson's gone and-"_

Flip.

_"What's the worst that I can say?_

_Things are better if I stay_

_So long and goodnight_

_So long and goodni-"_

Flip.

_"Beefcake! BEEFCAKE!"_

Flip!

"Sar-_ah..." _Mary's voice became pitchier and more annoying with each word. "You know that today is when the new episodes air!" she started sniffing, crying very big and very fake tears to gain some sympathy. Mary hated not getting her way, as she was a very spoiled little brat, or so "_Sa_r-_ah..." _thought.

"You always watch TV on Saturday, you have to share _sometimes_," Sarah smirked.

"I WANT THE REMOTE!" Mary flung herself on the ground and started screaming in rage, kicking and punching and wailing loudly.

Sarah stared at her blankly.

She flipped the channel.

Mary could see that her tantrum was not working. So...she jumped up and tackled her sister with all of her weight.

"Woman, get off of me!" Sarah screamed.

"I _want_ the _remote_!"

Somehow Mary snatched the remote from her, and she quickly changed it to the channel that she wanted.

_Flip!_

_"Blue Eyes White Dragon, attack Yugi's Dark Magician with your White Lightning!"_

_The dragon roared, and charged up a devestating bolt of white-blue electricity to hurl at-_

Sarah back-handed her and quickly grabbed the control as Mary howled with pain. She pointed it at the television and changed the channel.

**_Flip!_**

_When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears,_

_When you'd scream I'd-_

Mary got hold of Sarah's arm, sinking her little sharp teeth into the wrist. As she screamed and tried to fling her off, Mary snatched the remote from her hands. No one seemed to notice that the TV had started to smoke and spit sparks.

**_FLIP!_**

_"Oh my GOD! You KILLED Kenny!"_

_"You-!"_

**_FLIP!_**

_"No! Dark Magician!" Yami Yugi's voice cried out. The monster exploded into a million CG pieces... but not before Yami Yugi activated a facedown card-_

_**FLIP!**_

And suddenly, the two girls weren't there anymore. They left behind nothing but a huge smoldering burn on the couch, and a red book being devoured hungrily by flames...

o o o o o

_**ISF: **Yep. Like my last fic's first chapter, YGO characters don't have a very major role...yet. Good, bad, delete, bacon? Tell me...I need some harsh crit on my stuff. Harsh crit equals good. (praying that the ol' sucked into the tellie plot isn't too cliche and that she wrote it well)_

_...I think that maybe my sentences are a bit rambling and run-on. Do you? Just click that little box in the bottom left corner and tell me...tell me...tellllll...(psycotic critique whore mode) Anyway, for the song lyrics, I don't know if it breaks fanfiction dot net's rules, since it's not the whole song and just mentioned in passing. Plus, it's not like I copy n' pasted it, did I? All from my memory. XD Tell me if I should remove them. 'Kay?_

_Quiz time! Get this right and get...something...I dunno...how 'bout a cookie? Does anyone know what book Sarah was reading?_

_And Revan...did you like Sarah...? ;-)_

_**o o o InsaneShadowFan o o o**_


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two: Bashing and Candy Bars**

_Date posted:_

_Disclaimer: Oh, come on now, do you honestly not know that YGO doesn't belong to me? (concerned look)_

_o o o_

_REVIEW COMMENTS_

_**Sodapop1kitten: **Yeah. I'm just hungry. (tummy rumbles loudly) :( Thank you for your oh so helpful review. (stare) Just kidding:)_

_**Dreammistress Jade: **DING DING DING DING DING! AND WE HAVE A WINNER:D Yep, the book was Inkheart. I think the ending of chapter one was an allusion to the book burning in Inkheart, or at least that was what I tried to make it. (sweat drop) I'm glad that my smut incident was funny! Thanks for taking time to review, it's really appreciated. Here's your cookie. (hands you cookie)_

_**strangeanimefreak: **O.O Um...thank you...so...yeah...here's an update. XP Thanks for the review._

_**Alaqua: **Yep! You're right, it was Inkheart! Here's your cookie! Chocolate chip or ginger snap?_

_**egyptionkitty: **'Ey, those cookies aren't for you:( Of course, I'll make an exception for you, but only because you're so cute. XP You like the name? Me too! XD Thanks for the line._

_**Scorpia250: **Inkheart it is! (tosses you cookies) Hm..I didn't expect that so many of you guys would know the answer. Of course, that's how thick I am, huh? XD I'm glad the TV suckage plot isn't too cliche...otherwise, not even my fantastic skill could make it work. XD Domo for the review._

_**Atem's Queen of the Nile: **The lemons is the part with Joey and Seto. You know, the lemon being a sex scene:) I'm so clever with my chapter titles...8)_

_**Phersule: **Thank you! Here's your next chapter!_

_**MissDoma: **Yeah, me and my sister used to fight over TV rights all the time. --; Still do, s'matter of fact. Keep your pants on, I still like YGO. It's Sarah that doesn't, kill HER...(points at Sarah, who just happens to be standing near her, and inches away) . _

_**Hikaru May Sasaki: **Thanks:)_

_**shadowmaniac: **Don't worry, I intend for the two to be completely different stories. There will be one thing that'll maybe make the two similar...but now I shouldn't've said that, should I? --; whoops._

_o o o_

"Blue Eyes White Dragon, attack Yugi's Dark Magician with your White Lightning!" Kaiba thundered.

The dragon roared, and charged up a devastating bolt of white-blue electricity to hurl at its target. It released its attack, sending it hurling through the air, and hitting the Dark Magician in his chest.

"No! Dark Magician!" Yami Yugi's voice cried out. The monster exploded, into a million computer generated pieces...but not before Yami activated a facedown card.

"Activate trap!" he yelled, flipping up the card on his duel disk. The virtual copy of the card on the field flipped in response, revealing a picture of a knight hanging by a golden rope.

"My Rope of Life trap card brings back my Dark Magician from the graveyard with eight-hundred extra attack points!" Yami said with a confident smile. His sudden tenacity didn't affect Kaiba at all. He rolled his eyes in annoyance.

"I'm aware of the card's effect, Yugi," he said arrogantly. "And I'm also aware that you have to discard your entire hand for the effect to take place."

Yami said nothing as he tossed his three cards into the graveyard slot.

Saving his favorite monster had come with a heavy toll. He had his Alpha and Beta Magnet Warriors in his hand, and was planning to get Gamma to special summon Valkyrion the Magna Warrior to blast through Kaiba's sole defense, his Blue Eyes, then attack directly with Dark Magician. But no. He needed his Dark Magician on the field right now.

Kaiba examined his hand, but put down nothing, and ended his turn.

_What to do... _Yami thought as he drew. The Book of Magical Spell!

_Awesome. With that, I can boost up Dark Magician's attack by five hundred, enough to destroy the Blue Eyes!_

"I activate The Book of Magicial Spell!" he dropped the card onto his duel disk.

_Dark Magician: atk: 2800 ----- 3300._

So, here he was, staring at Kaiba's furious face, his mighty white dragon, about to be slain, the two girls fighting amidst the monsters-

Wait.

Huh?

He blinked. Did he just see two girls fighting amidst the monsters?

No...there wasn't anything there. But he was sure that he had seen something there. Kaiba had noticed as well. His sharp blue eyes glared at the same spot, as if daring them to show up again and interrupt _his_ duel.

Grey static flickered in and out of focus, in the form of two people wrestling. Now the audience, being Joey, Tristan, Tea, and Mokuba Kaiba, noticed, too. Slowly the static faded away, the image cleared, and it was as if someone had taken the two off of mute.

"GIMME GIMME GIMME!" the younger one said. "It's my turn to watch TV!"

"Get off of me, you rabid YOU-GAY-HOE lover!" said the older one as she tried in vain to push her away.

"Shut up!" cried the younger one.

By now Kaiba had found his voice.

"QUIET!"

In mid-fight, the two girls froze. The dark-headed one still had her hands clamped around the little one's throat, her other hand frozen in a fist raised in the air.

Kaiba pushed a button on his disk, causing the virtual monsters on the field to vanish. A little light on Yami's duel disk blinked: _opponent has withdrawn from duel._ A bright yellow light flashed momentarily, and Yugi had replaced his darker half.

Kaiba walked over to the two girls with swift, even strides. He stopped in front of them, looming over them forbiddingly, a vein twitching ever so slightly on his temple.

The silence was then puntured by a very high, pitchy squeal.

The younger one had broken free of the other girl's death grip and glomped Kaiba dead center.

"What the-"

"IT'S KAIBA!" she screamed at ear-pounding decibals as she hung somewhere around Kaiba's middle with surprising strength. Her object of desire had stumbled backwards, a sweatdrop replacing his vein and a shocked look on his face. Well, as shocked as Kaiba could possibly get.

"What the heck?" Mokuba said, jumping over the banister that encircled the dueling area, and running over to his brother, who was now giving Mokuba a look that clearly said he didn't know what to do in this situation, as no one had dared ever...erm...glomped him. Joey, Tea, and Tristan had all followed Mokuba's suit.

"Oh, I _knew _this would happen to me, someday!" the kid's voice was muffled due to her snuggling him. This seemed to be the last straw for Kaiba. Glomping, apparently, he could tolerate. But...but..._snuggling?_

No.

"_Get off_." Kaiba's voice was so cold, so furious, that she stopped, let go of his middle, and looked up at him with wide, blue eyes.

Meanwhile, the older girl had gotten up. Instead of copying her companion and attacking Kaiba fangirl-style, she has gone over to Yugi and was staring down at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Hey..."

"Uh...yeah...?"

"Aren't you that Yu-Gi-Oh dude?" she asked, prodding him on his chest as if checking if he was really there.

"Uh..."

The girl took Yugi's "uh..." and his blank, flustered expression as a "yes".

"But you're so much taller on TV..." she said as she poked his hair. "You're like a freaking hobbit. And your hair...it's so FAKE looking..."

Now, let's go back over and see how Kaiba's doing, eh?

"Who do you think you are?" Kaiba hissed between his teeth. Any person could feel his anger pulsing through the air like the sound waves at a concert. Kaiba usually had that strange, emotionless mask whenever he was angry, but today, he didn't bother to throw it on. His mouth was bared in an ugly snarl, distorting his face horribly and giving it very wolfish qualities. His eyes, instead of being chillingly cold and frosty...they were almost literally the hottest, bluest fire ever known in the _history_ of fire. They practically made the air around his face snap and crackle from heat. Any normal person would have pissed their pants.

Any normal person, yes.

But this girl didn't seem to be very normal, now did she?

She gave him a big, enchanting smile.

"You look so cute when you're angry, did you know that, Kaiba-san? Huh? Did you? Did you? Did you?"

"This girl seems to be a few cards short of a deck, if you know what I mean," Joey muttered. His companions silently agreed. The girl heard him as well.

"Ooooh, it's Joey!" she squealed, noticing him for the first time and giving him an engergetic wave. "Hi, Joey!"

"Um...hi." he gave her an uncertain grin. "Er...what's your name, kid?"

"Wow...Joey Wheeler asked me a question..." she sighed dreamily as she got lost in fantasies that no one would probably care to hear. "It's Mary! Mary Caldwell!"

"Mary, sweetie," Tea said to her in a kind voice. "Do you have any idea how you got here?"

When Mary saw Tea, her grin slipped off of her face as if someone had wiped it away with a wet cloth. She gave her a glare that obviously meant that she was not pleased to see the group's head cheerleader.

"Oh, it's _you." _she glowered.

"Oh, for god's sake, Mary!" the other girl groaned, still closly examining the many secrets and mysteries of Yugi's hair. "You're not _still_ in that 'Tea-bashing' phase of yours?"

"I've _told _you, Sarah! That woman is the spawn of Satan! SATAN, I say!"

"Tea...bashing?" asked Tea, curious. "Sarah" nodded. Apparantly finished (for now) with being fixated on the multi-colored goodness of Yugi Moto, she walked over to the others. Yugi did the same, but not before feeling his head and making sure that not a single red, black, or blond strand of hair was out of place.

"Tea-bashers, from what my sister says," her eyes flickered over to Mary momentarily, "Are people that can't stand you for some unknown reason, and write crappy fanfictions with you being the antagonist. Usually, you're a stupid slut that can't spell your own name."

"But...I'm not a stupid slut that can't spell her own name..."

"I know, I know," she said impatiently. "But bashers aren't known for their superb reasoning skills, are they?"

"Er..."

"Of course not."

"While this friendly chatting is all well and good" Yugi said, "It doesn't explain how you two suddenly appeared out from nowhere in the middle of me and Kaiba's duel."

"Oh, who CARES?" Mary said as she cracked a huge, happy grin and did a little dance. "Right now, I'm less than five steps away from Seto Kaiba. And that's all that really matters."

Sarah stared at her for a long time.

"You really are one pathetic creature, you know that?" she mused. Mary's lip quivered.

"Am not."

"Yeah, yeah, you just go on convincing yourself that having fantasies about a guy that's drawn on paper is perfectly acceptable and not odd in any way. Besides, this is just an illusion, none of these people are _real_."

"Hey, we're not illusions!" Joey growled indignantly. "...Are we?" he said in an undertone to Tristan. Tristan shrugged.

"_I _don't know, man."

Thinking as hard as his little brain would let him, Joey tried to think up exactly how to see if he was real or merely a figment of someone's imagination. Finally, his eyes lit up with inspiration, and he started digging around in his pants pocket. He pulled out a badly mashed candy bar. Carefully, he peeled away the wrapper, exposing the milky brown slab of milk chocolate underneath, then took a big bite and chewed thoughtfully.

"Why are you eating at a time like _this,_ Joey!" Tea yelled.

"Well, if I'm real, I'd be able to eat, right?" he replied thickly, his voice muffled slightly by Hershey's milk chocolate.

"No you didn't! You just wanted to take this chance to eat your stupid candy, didn't you?"

"...No..."

The fact that his eyes kept darting around shiftily didn't help his argument very much.

_o o o _

_**ISF: **Good, bad, WTF? Review, bitches. I'm sorry to say that I'm going on vacation for a week, so I won't be updating so soon...sorry, guys. :( Oh well, it can't be helped...Later._

_**O!O ISF O!O**_


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three: Just Who the Fudge IS Albert Bandura?**

_Disclaimer: No. NO._

_Date posted: 8/16/05_

_o o o_

_REVIEW COMMENTS_

_Since Fanfiction dot net is an assmunch, I can't do review comments anymore (at least that's what egyptionkitty has informed me) So, for all of you reviewers, thanks alot! That includes **Escaped-from-the-local-asylum**, **Alliance THE**, **Scorpia250**, **Hikaru May Sasaki**, **Dreammistress Jade**, **egyptionkitty**, **Sodapop1kitten**, **OnlyHumanC**, **The blank box**, **Princess of cheese **( (O.O) ), **Doma**, **Atem's Queen of the Nile**, **ZebraGirl** (double (O.O) ), and **WolfDemoness.**_

_o o o_

"-And so, that's how me and Sarah know you," Mary finished, proceeding to take a long gulp of hot chocolate from a chipped pink mug.

"...Woah."

"Totally, man."

By now, everyone, even the Kaiba brothers, were at Yugi's house, sitting in the kitchen, and listening to the story that so many other girls in shoddy fanfictions had told to the gang, about them being on a television show in another world.

When they had first entered the shop, Solomon had asked Yugi who his "new friends" were. Of course, the "friendship" group, which would include star-boy, pencil-head, cheerleading friendship girl, and a certain chihuaha had all planned on keeping the two girl's sudden appearance secret. How many people would believe someone that claimed a mini blonde psychotic fangirl and a Miss Scowling McScowler had appeared in the middle of a duel in a ball of television static?

Not many, I assume.

So, yep. That's what the four had planned.

But Yugi was a terrible liar.

_"Oh, hello Yugi! Tea, Joey, Tristan...oh? Kaiba's here too? And Mokuba? And who are your two new friends?"_

_**"U-u-uh, well, y-you see, they're...ow, Tea, don't hit me!"**_

_"Hm?"_

_**"R-right. You s-s-see, they're...they're new here! Yes! New in Domino City!"**_

_"Oh? Is that so?"_

_**"ye-yeah..."**_

_"Well, it's nice to see you two. And where have you two lovely ladies moved?"_

_**"Um...w-well, Grampa...you see...you...y-you...you see..."**_

_"Yugi?"_

_**"Y-yes, Grampa?"**_

_"You are quite possibly the worst liar I have ever met."_

After about thirty minutes of very detailed storytelling, now the most major characters in the Yu-Gi-Oh series knew that there was another parallel universe to theirs, that their lives were played on TV, and that Yugi, Seto, and Joey had million upon millions of overly random (and often quite stupid) fangirls lusting after their two-dimensional bodies.

Yugi's mouth had dropped on the floor long ago, and was starting to collect dust, Tea was just staring at Mary like she had jumped up, yelled "sockaroo!", and kicked Solomon in the shins, Tristan was just plain _out _of it, Mokuba had been looking for the past ten minutes at his brother's face, completely prepared to model his reaction like Seto's, and Joey's expression looked like Albert Bandura had tried to explain to him recipricol determinism

Don't know who Albert Bandura is?

Precisely.

The only person who did not seem to be affected by this piece of information was Kaiba, who was leaning against a wall, eyeing everyone else with less-than-kind blue eyes. After an exceptionally long, painful silence, he broke it with a harsh laugh.

"Have you all gone even crazier?" Kaiba sneered. "How can you all possibly believe in this imaginary nonsense? _'Alternate reality...you people are in a cartoon...' _pathetic little lies, all of them."

"Kaiba, why do you always do this?" Yugi said desperately. "Why can't you just accept that there are some things-"

"Please, Yugi. Don't waste my time with the same tired arguments you have been using over and over again." In an instant, Kaiba's voice had gone from cruel and mocking, to cold and curt, clipped with precision by a thick sheet of ice that only Seto Kaiba, CEO and president of Kaiba Corporations, could pull off.

"Well, Seto has a point, you guys," Mokuba said quietly. "Neither of those two girls have really given us any solid proof that their claims are true..."

"And while you go on talking like we're not even here," Mary interuppted loudly, "I'll be looking for a way to show you guys that I'm telling the truth. Oh man...if I had brought my deck with me..."

"Oh, that's right," a quiet voice came from the darkest corner of the kitchen. The whole time she had been here, Sarah had been brooding and staring off into space, looking very glum as she stirred a cup of green tea that had gotten cold ages ago.

She set her cup onto the counter, then dug into her back pocket and pulled out what looked like a deck of Duel Monster cards held together with a green rubber band.

"_You _left these scattered all over the yard, and _I _had to pick up after your lazy, slobby self, you good-for-nothing sack of..."

But Mary had snatched her deck out of Sarah's hands at "You left..." and ignored her indignant ranting. Mary tugged the rubber band off of her cards and flipped through her deck as if looking for a particular card. When she found it, she slapped it on the counter. Seto made an odd noise in his throat.

"My god!" Tea gasped. "A Blue Eyes?"

Oblivious to the shocked sounds of the gang, Mary continued looking through her deck, tossing down one, two, three, _four_ other cards before she was satisfied. There was, in order, her Blue Eyes White Dragon, a Red Eyes Black Dragon, another Blue Eyes, an Obelisk the Tormentor, and yet _another _Blue Eyes, all face up on the kitchen's flat surface, their holofoil faces glittering with opalescent colors.

o o o

_**ISF: **Ridiculously short, I know. Sorry about that, but I'm still recovering from the horrificness that is...BEAUFORT. (dramatic music) TT I'll post another longer chaper soon, I hope._

_So...you like it? You hate it? You're here by accident and freaked out by my fanfiction? To all of you regs, you know what to do. For the poor soul who stumbled into fanfiction dot net, close this window. NOW._

_Anyways, that Albert Bandura guy is a psychologist who did this study on kids with a bobo doll (those balloons with faces on them that you punch and they come back up) and a clown. I found it to be quite hilarious. Google him up to find out the full story._

_If there's anything I forgot to mention, tell me, it's really appreciated. Now, let's have a little quiz...no rewards, just for fun, sorry guys...Anybody think they know what Mary's middle name is? It's not that hard, actually..._

_Later, guys._

**_O!OISFO!O_**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four: No Data**

_Disclaimer: Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with my extreme pleasure that I admit that I AM Kazuki Takahashi. Who also happens to be George Bush. Anybody who is not a YGO fan now knows why YGO never made any sense to him or her. Because only holographic ninja knights can understand George Bush. (Shifty glance)_

_Date posted:_

_o o o _

_**ISF:** Aha, so I bet you guys thought I had died. (Muhahahaha) Silly fools, I was only trapped in my bathroom! I had locked myself in. (shifty glance) No one ever said that George Bush was a genius..._

_I jest, I jest. George Bush is a fine man. Very intelligent...and a swell president...(looks nervously at CIA bomb strapped to chest, starting to smoke)_

_Anyway, I'm sorry for my extreme absence. My pc's been broken, and thanks to a lot of people, there's no hope of saving it. Now I must save up for one myself. But luckily, I'm at my uncle and aunt's house, and they just left, so I thought, "What a perfect chance to start updating!"_

_Enjoy, my fellow ninja knights. Hail George Bush!_

_o o o_

"Hah!" Mary triumphantly screamed. "And _now _how can you deny the existence of another world, Kaiba-kun?"

The whole of the whole stared at the cards lying on the kitchen counter, completely aghast at this fantastically uncalled for event. All except for Sarah, whose left eyebrow rose quizzically at the expressions on their faces, completely clueless to why everyone in the room was so shocked at seeing a few cards her sister got on Ebay for the twelve dollars in change stuck between the couch cushions.

And Kaiba, of course.

He calmly walked over to the cards, picked up the nearest card, one of the Blue Eyes, held it up in the light for a few seconds...

Then promptly proceeded to rip it into pieces.

"N...n...NOOOOOOOOO!" Mary howled. She threw herself on the serial card-killer, and pounded her tiny little fists into his chest, which, by the way, had absolutely no effect on Kaiba whatsoever, physically or mentally.

"Oh, of ALL the things I've seen that jerk do, this REALLY take the cake!" Joey pushed up the sleeves of his shirt and threw a fist in Kaiba's face, which Kaiba caught in his own hands, twisted and squeezed into a tiny and painful ball, then tossed it (and the rest of Joey's body) over his shoulder in a span of about three seconds.

"Kaiba, I've known you were mean for a long time, but how could you do this to that poor girl?" Tea said angrily. She then went over to Mary, who was on the floor, still sniffling, and tried to comfort her. "I'm so sorry, Mary..."

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? Get the hell away from me!" Mary kicked Tea's shin, at the most painful, softest place possible, then went back to tearfully collecting the remnants of her card while Tea yelled and jumped up and down in pain, holding her leg.

"While all of this sobbing and crying is _highly _amusing," Seto dryly said, "the fact is that those cards are copies."

"COPIES? I'll have you know that those cards are REAL, just like all of my cards! I got them all in official, unopened Yu-Gi-Oh booster packs!"

Seto smirked. "You can argue all you want, but that doesn't make it true." Seto reached into a pocket on his trench coat, and pulled out what appeared to be his deck. He activated his duel disk and pulled out a card from his deck--Saggi the Dark Clown. He then placed Saggi on one of the monster slots. A static figure in the shape of Saggi appeared in the kitchen, then quickly grew clearer and gained color. Saggi looked around, eager to battle, and then saw that there was no duel going on. His ears drooped sadly.

Seto then picked up another one of Mary's cards, this time the Red Eyes. Again, he placed the card into an empty slot, right next to Saggi's. The duel disk made a few odd bleeping noises, and then a holographic blue box flickered in mid-air. _No Data,_ it said.

"Man, and I had thought those cards were real, too," Joey said, tenderly nursing his injured hand as he stood up and stumbled to the rest of the group.

Kaiba sneered. "Not a surprise, considering that only people who can duel would know the difference."

"Shut up, Kaiba!"

"Get some new comebacks, Wheeler."

"I oughta pound you..." Joey growled.

"Try to do so, and you'll end up with another smashed hand." By now, Kaiba had tossed Mary's card on the ground and put Saggi in his pocket with the rest of his precious teammates, logged his duel disk off, and was opening the door of the Game Shop. Mokuba hurried alongside his brother.

"I can see that this was all a precious waste of my time. You, Mary, was it? Next time you find another 'real' Blue Eyes, make sure it actually _looks_ like an authentic one, will you? Come on, Mokuba."

The faint tinkling of bells was the only indication that the Kaiba brothers had even been there.

"Yeah? Well we didn't want you here anyway, Kaiba!" Joey yelled as the door swung shut. "God, I can't stand that jerk..." Joey looked at Mary. "Sorry he ripped up your cards, kid." Mary shrugged her shoulders.

"I'll just get another one as soon as me and my sister get back to the real world."

"The 'real' world...what do you mean? Who's to say that our world's the real one and yours is the fake?" Tristan asked.

"Well, do _you_ guys have merchandise marketing on the mass popularity of my world?"

"Well, no…."

"Hey, Mary," Yugi interrupted, "May I look at those cards of yours?"

Mary tossed him her deck. Carefully, Yugi looked at every detail of Gearfried the Dark Knight. He vaguely noticed the words _Kazuki Takahashi_ squeezed on the bottom right corner of the card. Tea, looking over his shoulder at the card, noticed it as well.

"Kazuki...Takahashi? Who's he?" she asked, to no one in particular.

"I dunno, but he sounds like a total nerd!" Tristan said.

"Yeah, like some forty year old living with his grandmother, still playing Dungeons and Dragons!" Joey said. He and Tristan both laughed.

o o o

Seto was in the Kaiba Corp. boardroom, in a major meeting with another rival company. Well, not _rival_, to be exact. They would have to be at the same caliber as Kaiba Corp. to be _rivals_. An annoyance, more likely, or a "gnat" to his own company. Next to Kaiba sat Mokuba, who always attended meetings if he could help it.

The president and founder of LoliCOM and Company was currently discussing with, or rather, Kaiba with a possible financing from Kaiba Corp. for LoliCOM's latest computer, which he said was the fastest and most advanced piece of technology yet, decades ahead of it's time. At the back of the room, in the darkest corner, where guests not apart of the meeting would sit (usually children of other company heads, brought along to try and soften Seto's heart--unsuccessfully), sat the daughter of Mr. Mainyu. Her head was bowed, eyes covered by black hair and shadows.

"And I care," Kaiba coldly interrupted Mr. Mainyu's speech, "...why?"

This meeting had been going on for roughly two hours, with Mr. Mainyu (obviously, LoliCOM's president) desperately rehashing the same "best of its kind" praises, and quite frankly, Mr. Seto Kaiba, CEO and president of Kaiba Corporations, one of the most powerful companies in the world, had a splitting headache.

"Let's be frank here, Mainyu. It's obvious that you need financing from Kaiba Corporations to begin production of this 'miracle supercomputer', and it's obvious that I don't need you. Which begs the question: why are you even trying?"

"Well, y-you see, I-" Mainyu stammered. Kaiba cleanly cut in.

"There _is_ no reason you should even try, _Mr._ Mainyu. I already have enough to deal with, and I certainly do not have any desire to baby-sit your pitiful, third-rate boy's scout club." In the corner, Mainyu's daughter snickered, adding even further embarrassment to her father. But, Mainyu was as pigheaded and stubborn as Kaiba himself. He certainly would not go down without, at the very least, shaming Seto. He smiled in spite of the scarlet flush creeping up his fat neck.

"Ah-hahah-ha..." he stammered, "by 'enough to deal with', d-do you mean always losing to Yugi Moto in Duel Monsters?"

At first glance, Seto appeared to have no reacted to this, but one cold, frostbitten stare at Mainyu, which made the once-mighty founder of LoliCOM feel as if he was slapped by an iceberg, got the point across.

"Talkative, aren't you, Mainyu?" Kaiba murmured in a low, dangerous voice that sent chills down one's spine. "A bit _too _talkative for your own good. However, luckily for you, I am in a good mood, and will humor you. By 'enough to deal with', I mean mental patients. In fact, just today two loonies interrupted a duel of mine today, raving about another parallel world."

Slightly, very slightly, Mainyu's daughter lifted her head, as if interested by this. Kaiba had continued.

"Then one of them, a little blond girl, claimed that she had _three_ Blue Eyes, despite the fact that that would be impossible, considering that I have the only Blue Eyes' in existence," -Mainyu's daughter practically drank this information in- "and actually got Yugi and his pitiful group of friends to believe her. Of course, they were fakes. Obviously."

"Now-" Kaiba pressed a button on his chair, and two huge guards in suits stomped in, "It's time for you and your daughter to leave. Good day."

As she was being escorted out of Kaiba's sight with her father, Mainyu's daughter had a triumphant smile playing on her lips.

o o o

_**ISF:** Meh, the ending feels a bit rushed, honestly. So, did all of you enjoy this much-anticipated chapter? I hope so. Once again, I'm really sorry that I haven't updated in so long._

_And interesting bit of trivia for you. Obviously, LoliCOM was made up from "lolita complex", which has something to do with kiddie porn. XP _

_What I wanted it to mean was "childish computers", which would mean that LoliCOM's computers sucked. XD_

_So, anyways, review! Good, bad, bacon? Be harsh when critiquing this...real harsh. . _

_Later!_


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five: Shielded By Leaves and Shadows**

_Disclaimer: ME NO OWN YU-GI-OH_

_Date Posted: 7/4/06_

_o o o_

_**ISF:** Yes yes, it's been a long time since I've updated. My stepfather is planning on giving me his computer when he gets back on a trip. Lets hope some of the original readers are still on another note, happy Fourth of July! (My favortie holiday) Oh wait, some people on here are from different countries...ah, whatever._

_I did some revising the morning after I wrote this. No major improvements or changes, just some fine-tuning._

o o o

A cloud of steam rushed out into the hallway as Sarah stepped out of the bathroom, dressed in pajamas and patting her still-wet hair dry. She could hear the echo of Tea and Mary's voices coming from the doorway of Tea's bedroom. Walking in, Sarah glanced at Tea, setting up a pile of blankets on the floor, and Mary, also dressed in borrowed pajamas, jumping up and down on the bed. She knew perfectly well what had happened in the twenty minutes she had left them alone.

"I see Mary's taken your bed," Sarah nonchalantly said to Tea.

"Yup!" Mary landed not-so-gracefully on soft, azure blankets. She growled a bit. "I don't see why we have to stay at Tea's house of all places--ow!" (for in that moment, the knuckles of Sarah's left hand had found contant on Mary's skull)

Sarah turned to Tea. "She doesn't mean that, Tea. We appreciate you letting us stay here Thanks for the pajamas. Oh, and sorry about that porcelin vase I almost broke."

"Oh...don't worry about it, it's not worth much anyways." Her smile only faltered a little; probably from the fact that a ten-year-old that didn't even like her had her whipped beyond all compare. "Luckily my parents are at my aunt and uncle's house spending the weekend."

"What I don't get," Mary started indignantly, "Is why we couldn't go spend the night at Joey's or at Yugi's place, even Tristan's place would be better-"

"Well, that's good." Sarah said loudly enough to cover up Mary's voice. She slid into her sleeping bag like soap slides through wet hands. "I don't know how many more of Mary's explainations of how we got here I can take. Thanks for that pillow you threw at me, Mary, Tea didn't give me one." She plumped up the pillow while Tea turned the knob on the lamp in her room, extinguishing all light except for the ghostly green glow of a night-light.

A murmur of goodnights floated through the room and all three girls soon entered the quiet, peaceful beginning of sleep.

o o o

Tea's head jerked up from her pillow, her brown hair tousled and her mind still groggy with dreams. Her bedroom had the silent feeling places had when everyone was asleep, and Mary's slow, soft breathing seemed to be the only sound in the house. But panic chased her sleepy thoughts away, and the light of sodium-vapor streetlamps from outside reflected the wild, frightened animal look in her eyes. For a minute she thought that she heard voices downstairs, and she was certain she had heard something shatter downstairs, like glass or--her heart flopped into her stomach--porcelin.

"You heard that too?" From the meager light able to slip through the room's curtains, Tea saw that, though her voice sounded tired, Sarah's eyes were calm and bright with alertness, and she had already crawled to the door and put her ear down to the crack of the bedroom door. Tea did the same.

The humming-like sounds of a house at night was all that either of their ears could hear. After a long few minutes of straining their ears to hear every last noise they could, the two could finally decipher the low, yet loud murmuring of people's voices on the first floor.

_"You idiot,"_ a raspy smoker's voice garbled, _"We were supposed to come in unnoticed, Boss. Those brats are probably escaping through the window by now."_

_"Don't worry, I'm sure they're not awake, otherwise they'd all be squealing like pigs."_ The second voice sounded only a bit younger, with a slight lisp that weaved its way through his speech.

That was enough for Sarah; she stood up silently and crept lightly over to Mary's silent form and tried to shake her awake. However, Tea's ears seemed to be glued to the floor. Jackhammer heartbeats thumped in her throat while beads of cold sweat rolled off her forehead and dripped to the ground (she prayed to God--or Buddha, Yahweh, whatever--that the splashes only sounded loud to her)

_"Are you positive this is the place?" _the raspy voice asked, _"I'm not so keen on breaking into someone's house without being sure this is the right one."_

_"That what it says. Miss Mainyu wouldn't give us faulty equipment, though if her father manufactored this, then we're fucked for sure."_

_"Sh, keep your voice level down, Boss. Besides, the Missus isn't fond of people insulting her father, no matter how much she disrespects him."_

_"Right, right. Alright, you check the downstairs bedroom, and I'll look at the ones upstairs."_

In one moment, maybe two or three, of self-despair, Tea agonized over why she just had to pick the bedroom nearest to the stairs. Meanwhile, Sarah had lightly slapped her sister awake. Mary shook her head sluggishly, trying to shake off her drowsiness.

"Whuzhappnin', huh?" she asked.

"Shut up! Just be quiet and follow me. Tea, lets go out the window."

Tea shook her head tearfully as she struggled to keep down the sob in her throat. "We can't, none of the rooms have a balcony or roof to crawl on to."

"Shoot. Get off the floor, we'll have to get out through the front."

Tea stood up shakily, her legs aching from being kneeled over so long.

"Your door creak?"

"No."

"No creaking floorboards?"

"No."

"Good, then lets go." In one painstaking second, Sarah had creaked open the door. A body built almost like a Tonka Truck was sneaking up the staircase, and, proving Tea's answers credible, produced no sound from them. Hands shaking slightly, Mary grabbed a pencil off of an end table, and rolled it down the hall.

The body stiffened and stared down the dark hallway. He crept as quickly and stealthily as he could, and walked right past the three. Tea smelled the trace of wine wafting from him as he sneaked by the girls in his search for them. Motioning to not make a sound, Sarah led her sister and hostess down the stairs, down those long, neverending flights of stairs, trying to walk, no run down them without going too fast to make a sound and they could feel that man's hands about to reach for their necks, they really did, felt his merlot-soaked breath hitting the backs of their necks.

With the other person wandering in the back of one of them could get out the door faster. A large clump of trees and bushes were next to the yard, and all of them crawled under, shielded by leaves and shadows, accompanied by the smell of brown dirt, sweat, and their own terror. No sooner than they hid themselves as best as they could, the front door slammed open and two shadows, one of them the Tonka-Truck, raced out, running down the street in seemingly hot pursuit of their victims.

Tea's back started aching, crying to be stretched out how it's supposed to, but her heart's loud pumps drowned it out, _just wait a little more a little longer wait till they're gone_. She could hear a car slowly going down the road.

"I will find her, oh yes I will," a slurred voice chanted, muffled a bit by the car's engine. "I will find my love I will, I went to the Antartic wastes and London and even in the middle of the Middle East and ran over that guy with the car...I wonder if he's okay? Oh, but anyways I'm sure that today's the day I find my love..."

"Shaddup, Adrian," another man yawned. "Hey, we got any sandwiches left? I need some energy to repaint the car, this yellow's making me sick."

The other man's angry reply faded and grew silent as the car rumbled away.

"I think it's okay to get up now," Mary said as she stood up, stretching her muscles. "Man, who were those freaks?" she asked, "You think they were out to capture Tea and hold her for ransom or something?" Her voice shrunk into a mumble as she pondered whether or not she should have given Tea away.

"No, I'm pretty sure they were looking for us, Mary," said Sarah, dusting soil off of the bunny print on her sleeves.

"Huh? Why would you say that?"

"Because," Sarah pulled out a couple slips of paper from her pocket, "They would have to be pretty stupid to be looking for Tea with two pictures of us."

o o o

_**o o o InsaneShadowFan o o o**_


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six:**

_Date Posted:7/13/06_

_o o o_

_**ISF:** So, after nearly of year of going without a computer, I finally got one. HOORAY! Now I can probably update much more often, I'm thinking at least once a week. ._

_Thanks for the reviews, you guys. Of course, I guess since my absence many of you had left. But that's alright, I'm sure I'll be able to meet plenty of new faces that love to read stories about "ordinary" Mary Sues being swept up into the YGO canon universe. XD_

_Probably my favorite part about the last chapter that I've been meaning to put into place is the situational irony of Mary and Sarah. Mary, despite being fanatically obssessed with YGO, treats Tea like a piece of crap, and Sarah, who doesn't even KNOW most of the characters besides the most main ones in all the episodes, treats her with respect. I like how this fic is going much more than my last one. XP But anyways, on to the fic. _

_o o o_

"Mr. Kaiba, sir?" a young lady knocked on the office doors and timidly entered. "Your brother's been waiting for you downstairs for a while now. He just told me that he's coming up."

"He's still here?" Kaiba said roughly. He looked up from the day's final paperwork through his bangs, which created an interesting effect of dark brown and stormy blue. His eyes glanced at the clock above her head, and his voice rose very slightly. "Didn't I tell you to get the chauffeur to take him home? It's nearly twelve."

"I'm sorry, sir," the secretary timidly said, quaking and trembling under the steady, cold stare of her employer. "I did inform the driver, sir, but Mokuba-"

"You do not call him that." Kaiba cleanly cut her off. "You refer to him as Mr. Kaiba, like me, and you will give him the respect he deserves. After all…he is much higher on this company's food chain than you are."

The girl understood the threat. "Y-yes sir. Forgive me." She quickly turned to leave, closing the doors quietly behind her to not disturb the lion in the den, or rather, the lion sitting cross-legged in a straight-backed, stone-hard chair, surrounded by a very large, fine mahogany desk. Kaiba returned to his papers.

Most people, if they could see Kaiba right now, would think to themselves that he looked the same as always. Same sleek, brown hair, same stern frown set over thin and knife-like lips, same alert blue eyes. Only the people who worked with him (perhaps worked _for_ him would be a better term) the most would vaguely notice the slightly untidy look of his hair, and the microscopic gray shadows under his eyes. Truth be told, Kaiba was more exhausted than he had been in memory, excluding the days when he was worked to the bare bone by Gozaburo.

Kaiba mentally shook the old memories out of his tired mind. He never enjoyed thinking about those days. The way he, so often drained and irritated, snapped and yelled at his brother, and instantly regretted it when he looked at the hurt it caused. Mokuba didn't remember those arguments, but he certainly did.

The office doors creaked open, sounding just as aching and overworked as Kaiba felt. Mokuba surveyed his brother closely.

"You look like shit."

"Don't use that language, Mokuba," Kaiba said sternly. He resumed his paperwork, much to his brother's dislike.

"How long do you think you'll be at that until we can go home?" Mokuba asked as he took off his coat and sat down opposite to Kaiba, obviously prepared to wait until dawn for his brother to finish.

"There are only a few papers left to be done. You can put that coat back on."

Mokuba complied, staring at his older brother the whole time.

For three minutes straight Kaiba worked, well aware of Mokuba's grey-eyed gaze.

"What?" he finally asked irritably.

"I was wondering about that Mainyu guy you talked with earlier," Mokuba said quietly.

"Though I hardly understand why you would waste your time thinking about such an incompetent businessman, wonder about whatever you please."

"I was really just thinking about his daughter, actually."

"Belladonna, I believe her name was." Kaiba smirked. "I hadn't noticed that you were looking for a girlfriend."

"Shut up, Seto," Mokuba said, cheeks flushed a deep crimson (Kaiba's smirk grew wider). "Did you get the feeling that she didn't really like her father?"

"I suppose so," replied Kaiba gruffly, once again returning to his work, "but then again, I wouldn't think anyone enjoys the company of that sniveling loser. Which would beg some people to ask that if that brat had it in for daddy dearest, why would he drag her along anyway?"

"Did you see how she looked when you told them about those two girls? For some reason...she looked really happy about it. I wonder why?"

But before Kaiba had a chance to respond, for the third time of the night the doors burst open, and a man in black glasses and a suit strode in, looking grim.

"Mr. Kaiba, I have just received word that somebody has attempted to hack into the main computer's database."

o o o

_**ISF: **Short, yes. I promise that the next chapter will be more substantial._

_**o o o InsaneShadowFan o o o**_


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7: A Glass of Whiskey**

_Date posted: 1/29/08_

_**ISF: **__Well, it has been a long time since I updated this story. Two-ish, long, terrible years of a cliffhanger? Ooh._

_Well, I've gotten my life in (somewhat) order, and I have a basic understanding of where I'm going, even though it's but the faintest, broadest shadow, and I have always regretted not finishing this thing, so here goes, eh?_

O o O o O

It was late, or rather, so late that it was early. Yugi yawned, and stared blearily at his alarm clock. _Four-thirty...as if anyone in their right mind would be ringing the doorbell at this time…_

He seemed to have been the only one who had heard the door ring. His parents were away on a vacation and Grandpa…Yugi's door was cracked, and he could hear his grandfather's deep snores, always followed after a long silence by a slight cough and a gasp. Grandpa really needed to go see a doctor about that.

The doorbell rang again, and an insistent knocking seemed to imploringly call for somebody. _Alright, alright…_

He clicked on the light and swung his legs over the bed, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the Millennium Puzzle glint ominously, its surface looking almost oily in the lamp's dim light. For a split second, Yugi's stomach felt like it was sinking, and he wondered whether or not he should put it on…just in case, after all. They was nothing wrong about being prepared against Rare Hunters or any other villains of the like. He had the vague feeling of something ominous, and he didn't like it. Of course, there hadn't been any trouble lately. Things had been pretty quiet, but…. The doorbell buzzed impatiently, and Yugi shook his head. He could feel Yami's soul, always present, in the Puzzle, resting, but never sleeping, and it comforted him. He wouldn't be far away, regardless of Yugi wearing the Puzzle or not. Besides, Yugi laughed a little uncertainly to himself, enemies trying to steal his puzzle or cards don't just go around knocking at the doors of their targets.

He walked to the door and opened it. His jaw dropped—he couldn't help it, really, seeing Tea Gardner of all people in a skimpy, lacy nightie, shivering slightly and with the slightly tousled hair of a woman from Yugi's most inappropriate dreams. Sarah and Mary were mere afterthoughts following a string of embarrassing thought. Yugi looked down quickly, and suddenly felt a deep, hot flush spreading across his face.

This really was the worse night of all to be wearing Kuriboh pajamas.

O o O o O

"S-S-sorry for c-coming over s-so late…" Tea's teeth clattered together as she tried to curl a blanket around her tighter and drink from a mug of hot chocolate at the same (the clattering from her being cold, of course, not from multi-tasking). "W-we didn't k-know were to go and—", she sneezed, spilling half of the cocoa onto herself, and made a miserable, sick little noise.

"It's your own fault for getting sick," Mary said shortly. She was shivering slightly as well, and hadn't been very keen on walking six blocks with bare feet on cold concrete. "You don't go wandering around half a city wearing a skanky thing like that, and half of the men we walked by catcalled at you. I dunno why you'd even wear that to bed, as if you even got a boyfriend or anything, it's not like anyone—"

"If you don't shut up, Bozo," said Sarah. She did not finish her threat, finding her tea to be much more interesting than her sister. Out of the three girls, she seemed to be the only on completely unaffected by the cold night-time walk.

"Or what, Ugly-face, you gonna tell Dad about it if we ever get home? Nyeh-nyeh-nyeh," Mary waggled her tongue annoyingly at her sister. "And why don't you ever drink anything except tea?"

"It makes for healthy drinking, you know. I'm as healthy as a horse and with none of the cavities and gingivitis that you have, thanks."

"But the thing I don't get, Tea, is why anybody would come to your house looking for you three," Yugi loudly said over Mary and Sarah's bickering. "Why would anybody go after you? I mean, you have a connection with me, and somebody could possibly be trying to get me through you, but…"

"So somebody wants to capture Tea to use as bait? Excellent! Where can I find this guy?"

"How many times do I have to tell you, idiot?" Sarah said irritably. "No one was looking for Tea, they had pictures of _us._ As in, you and me, no one else."

"That's stupid!" said Mary, who really seemed to have taken well to the idea of selling Tea's freedom to the highest bidder. "Anyways, how is it possible that somebody here could have gotten our pictures?"

"See this?" Sarah waved the pictures in Mary's face. "You see it? They're right in front of you, why do you keep on denying the completely obvious, huh?"

"But I don't get it, we're from another universe, _hello_. You can't just get pictures of people from different dimensions or whatever."

_"But the pictures are right here. RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES_."

"But we're from another dimension, I don't see—"

"PICTURES. HERE."

"You can't just—"

"RIGHT HERE. IN MY HAND."

"We're—"

From the living room, they all heard the game store's door swing shut—Yugi had neglected to lock it after letting in the three girls—with such force that it shattered. Heavy, angry footsteps made their way through the store and headed towards the living room. All four of the people looked up at the doorway in shock.

"K-Kai—"

Seto Kaiba, clad in business suit, was hovering over the frightened spectators, a furious glint of the most frightening anger Yugi had ever seen him exhibit.

"YOU!" He roared at Yugi, his index finger accusing the boy of some dreadfully hideous crime. His face was twisted in fury, and his face was pale, so pale that it looked almost as white and perfectly porcelain as cold, white milk.

"Kaiba, what in the world are you doing here so early in the—"

"It was you! You had to have had something to do with it, you and your new freak show friends that just decide to pop up and completely _destroy _half of Kaiba Corp's latest product!"

"What are you talking…?"

"Somebody had managed to hack into the company main database," Kaiba said. His voice was at room level, but judging from his cold, no, ice-hot tone, his wrath had not even completely begun. "Yes! A multi-billion dollar corporation database, protected by only the best defenses! By the time the hacker was stopped, half of the latest project on the latest duel disk design was corrupted. _HALF OF IT!!" _He screamed, his face distorted completely into one of a pseudo-humanoid demon from hell. "Kaiba Corp has lost thirty million dollars it invested into that project, the blueprints of the final and prototype models are gone, production was planning to start next week and-I-know-IT-HAD-SOMETHING-TO-DO-WITH-YOU!" he ground out the last few words between his perfect, beautiful, snarling teeth. "You and your latest additions to the gang of idiots will have _HELL to pay for this!"_

A long spanse of silence filled the void, and then Sarah let out a long, slow, nasally laugh.

"What? Are you going to sue us for it?" She said dryly. "You saw us appear out of thin air, Kaiba, or however it is you pronounce it. I—neither of us—have a dime or a yen to our name. We don't even exist in legal terms here, I bet."

"I can _make _you and your idiot of a sister exist," (_"hey!" sniffed Mary) _Kaiba snarled. "And you do, you _DO_. Nobody, much less two of most idiotic cretins I've seen in a long time, pop out of nonexistence! I refuse to accept it!"

"Well, that's a bit stupid," said Mary conversationally. "Aren't things broken up into itty bitty bits of things and sent somewhere else by television?"

There was a slight pause. Sarah turned to Mary. "Did you, by any chance, happen to get that form Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?"

"Well…yeah," she said. Sarah snorted.

"You know, if you had even bothered to take your eyes off of Johnny Depp for four seconds, you would have learned that television uses electromagnetic WAVES, not 'itty bitty bits of things' as you call it. Radio waves are not matter of any kind…however, it has been shown that visible light exhibits dual properties of being both waves and small particles, but I don't think…oh, well, whatever. Kaiba," she turned, frowning slightly, "just had someone try to hack his company's main computer system the same night that some people break into Tea's house with pictures of us. Mary and I have got something to do with it."

"…which is what I've just been saying, you complete ignorant," growled Kaiba angrily.

But beneath his angry exterior, the cogs of Kaiba's brilliant brain began to stir, and he thought about the implications of that. Somebody who would have the ability and available technology to be able to break through the defenses and even manage to do some damage to a company's database would also, theoretically, also have enough money to be in control of people (something that Kaiba was definitely familiar with firsthand), or rather, would have access to money, or even the illusion of money at worst. You could always get somebody, somewhere, to do dirty work for you as long as you could carry yourself properly. But of course…no, no. It was highly unlikely that an idiot like that would…yes...there was still a definite possibility of it, none the less. Best to keep that open, for now.

And then, just as suddenly as he had stormed in like a hurricane, he slapped a roll of bills on the table for compensation of the shattered door, and whisked his way back to his limousine, cold façade neatly back in place. In his limo, with the driver hidden behind the screen, Kaiba's headache quickly came back and a wave of exhaustion fell over him. He rubbed his temples. What he really wanted now was a glass of whisky.

O o O o O


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight: The Day in Which Yugi Becomes a Man**

_**Date posted: 2/3/08**_

_**Disclaimer: **__Somehow, somewhere, there is a person on fanfiction dot net claiming to be Kazuki Takahashi and thus the almighty creator of the Yu-Gi-Oh Universe. Sadly, I am not one of them. Though I would like to be, one day._

_**ISF:**__ Alrighty, time for the new chappie! . Oh man, is it great to say that. Ah, I remember the good ol' days of wonderful times of posting my crappy fics and having others read and enjoy them. It's great to be back._

_So anyways, the plot is starting to thicken, and things are rapidly going to change. Belladonna Mainyu is going to be making a comeback. Will her ulterior motives be uncovered in this heart pounding, show stopping chapter of Electromagnetic Crunch? Better stick around and find out._

_Now, TO THE STORY! (flies)_

O O O O O

Through the murky haze of the early morning and orange street lights, two men walked slowly through the nearly empty streets of Domino, almost of if they were going to their own executions.

"Damnit," said the younger one with a lisp. "I can't believe we fell for something so stupid."

The older man snorted.

"Yup. The old pencil trick," he said. "By the time we picked it up and figured out the trick, they were already gone. The Big Boss is going to chew off our hides, stick them back on, and boil us alive."

"I hope she doesn't cut our pay."

"…" the older man looked at his comrade incredulously.

The two men reached an old alley, inhabited only by the usual unconscious drunk, a dumpster, and a raggedy cat sniffing hopefully around the dumpster for food.

"Oy, move it!" The young one kicked it, and with a yowl it soared through the air like a football, but luckily landed on a pile of somebody's dirty, forgotten clothes. It quickly recovering and made a break for it, spitting and hissing. Meanwhile the two men, making sure that nobody was following or watching them (they looked shiftily at the drunk, but he was fast asleep in a pile of vomit), they slowly pushed the heavy dumpster aside.

It should be mentioned that the building the dumpster was against was a small, miserable building, with grey bricks that looked like they were sagging in exhaustion from the weight of their impossible burden. It was a building that was small, crushed and hidden behind towering skyscrapers and was easily forgotten, simply because nobody who _want_ to go into such a sad, desolate place. With nobody willing to go into it, it was less obvious to outside people that this building, in fact, had no doors.

But when the men pushed the dumpster aside, a small hole was revealed, a hole just big enough to barely allow a large man in and plenty large enough for two regular men to go into, one at a time. They got into it, and as if by magic (or the latest advance in technology) the dumpster rumbled and quickly moved back into place. Now inside the tiny building, the two men walked to a wall, seemingly normal and unsuspecting to any unwanted person who somehow managed to inadvertently slip by the first level of security. The men put their eyes to a tiny, almost pointless prick in the wall, and after a second of silence the hidden eye scanner confirmed their identities, thus opening a steel trapdoor cleverly hidden in between many large crates.

The trapdoor was an entrance to an impossibly long series of passages, halls, and rooms, but the two men were very familiar with the area and thus were able to navigate it fairly easily. In the entire lair, the only people that they passed were a scientist in a lab coat hastily jogging to wherever he needed to be, and a dark looking woman wearing a trench coat. Twist after twist, turn after turn, and the men finally made it to a dark hallway, of which there were many doors on each side. On the very opposite end, there was a double door much larger than all of the others. Glancing nervously at one another, they slowly walked to it, hearts pounding, vision blurring.

_Crreeaak._

The door itself seemed unwilling to open.

The men looked around in the huge, domed room. It would almost be suitable as a ballroom if it weren't for the sheer dankness of it. There was a long line of chairs behind an even longer rectangular table made out of some unknown mineral that glittered sinisterly in the dank overhead light, and in the middle there were three thrones (the middle in _those_ was the biggest). As of now, only two people were seated in the largest throne and the one to its left. The two people were cloaked in shadow.

"Approach the table," the person on the left barked suddenly in a dry, raspy voice, making the two grunts jump. Almost painfully, the men inched their way to the table…

_"Hurry up, fools!"_

They inched their way much more quickly at that, looking guiltily up at the shadowy superiors before them.

"So."

The person in the largest throne had a much higher voice than the servant in the other throne. The Boss continued.

"So. As I recall, I sent you two on a mission to capture the Caldwell children," The Boss said silkily. "But as you stand before me, I have yet to see either of them in your grasp. Unless you have hidden them in your pockets, that is."

The Boss laughed in slow, breathy "ha-ha's" that sent ice-cold shivers up the grunts' backs.

"We…we…." The older man stuttered. "T-they…they managed to get away."

"Oh dear," said the Boss in an almost caring voice, and for a split second the men thought that maybe, just _maybe_, they would not be punished for their folly…and then the Boss's servant pulled out a gun. The older grunt could hear his partner whimpering fearfully. The subordinate turned to look at him, and turned his head in a quizzical, almost curious manner. Slowly, with a tiny _"click,"_ he cocked the gun and deliberately began putting pressure on the trigger. The older grunt felt suddenly warm, and then suddenly realized that he had pissed himself.

"Now, now, Shyama, let's not frighten them yet." The Boss said sweetly. Turning to the two frightened men, who were almost wild with the prospect of escaping from this alive, the Boss made a slight motion with curiously delicate, slim hands. They looked as soft as velvet. "You two may leave. Go reply to your respective superiors."

"Oh-oh…_thank you_," the younger man babbled. He suddenly burst into happy tears. Even with the shadow covering the Boss, the older man saw the sickened grimace at this disgusting outburst of his comrade. He wanted to punch his blubbering fool of a comrade, who had now begun hiccupping and was dripping snot from the nose. Shyama grimaced.

From another doorway, different from the one the two men had come through, a large guard came to usher them along. The older man felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He hated those guards...they wore a suit-like piece of clothing that covered everything of them, right down to the face, and he never knew whether they were human or not. The only thing visible of the guard was his beady eyes. His irises almost seemed to glow a dim red.

With a thud, the double door closed on the men and the guard, and the man whose name was Shyama turned to his master.

"Why did you let those idiots off?" He asked. If it weren't for the raspy, deep tone of his voice, he would have sound mildly surprised. His Boss got up from the throne, and slowly walked, back turned to Shyama, to an area behind all of the chairs. The Boss looked much shorter and frailer upright than before, when seated.

In the area behind the thrones was a large, dark machine. It was on, and rumbled slightly from the effort. It almost seemed to be sucking something greedily out of the air, as if thirsty for nourishment. The Boss walked to the back of it, where nearby a cage held a shivering figure.

"You know that I have more skilled henchmen than those two, you know," the Boss suddenly said, back still turned away from Shyama. Observing the terrified figure in the cage, who tried to stumble away fearfully, the Boss continued. "If I had wanted to, I would have sent them and not two of the lowest-ranking people under my power."

"But…why wouldn't you have wanted to capture them now?" asked Shyama. He walked to his master, and stood beside her as they observed the behavior of the caged person, a trembling little boy wearing a shirt with the word "Yu-Gi-Oh!" across it, who whimpered in a country voice, _"p..please…don't hurt me…"_ The Boss looked at Shyama, showing her feminine face framed by black hair and showing tiny, white teeth twisted in a smile, and said, "Foresight, my dear, have a little foresight and it all works out for the best, you see…."

O O O O O

Morning…quite early in the morning, in fact, and the birds outside knew so and were awake, chirping musically as they looked for food to placate their empty little stomachs. Yugi, Sarah, Mary, and Tea had slept a few hours to take the bite out of their sleepiness, and they were up again, still tired, but functioning.

Tea was making breakfast for everybody, and had already prepared bacon and eggs, still working on the pancakes. Yugi and Sarah devoured the food, and after a few long minutes of dismissively sniffing food made by Tea's own hands Mary decided that she was a growing girl and needed nourishment regardless of its maker and began crunching down on bacon. The kitchen door creaked open and Solomon Moto walked through, stretching his old, tired limbs.

"Good morning, good morning…" he said, completely oblivious to the three girls, one of them in a skimpy nightie, and he sat down next to Yugi and began piling food onto his plate. Sarah and Yugi exchanged glances and Mary giggled a little.

Solomon had begun to eat. "I slept okay, I think," he said in a grave voice, very odd for somebody drowning all of his food in ketchup. "Except I had this really odd dream, you see. It was weird…but down to the meat of it all Seto Kaiba was yelling and chasing me because I had lost him money or something…wait, how did you three get here?" He stared blearily at the three girls.

Yugi sighed.

"It's a long story, Grandpa."

Solomon looked around at Sarah, Mary, and the scantily-clad Tea, and shrugged, continuing his breakfast. It was too much work so early in the morning to yell at Yugi. Besides, if somehow his vertically-challenged, card-obssessed grandson had finally become a man, he should be proud for this most wonderful day of Yugi's life.

O O O O O

_**ISF: **__Good, bad, bacon? Drop a line and tell me which one and why. I'd really appreciate some reviews._

_**O!O ISF O!O**_


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine:

**Chapter Nine: CATHRIN**

_Date posted:4/11/08_

O O O O O

Repairing the main computer database was always a hassle.

The first few rays of the morning sun were shining through the windows in the hallway, but in the central control room, where the better part of the database was located (excluding a few computers in the Kaiba Corp. building that had complete access to it) was windowless, to ensure security from peeping toms or spies from rival companies from viewing it without putting up a hell of a fight. All of the computer specialists, and Kaiba himself, were bathed in a milky white fluorescent glow as they pounded away on keyboards or hurried to other places delivering important files and disks necessary for the database's recovery.

There was something about the light from a backlit screen that comforted Kaiba, but there was little that could comfort him now other than a long sleep in a clean, warm bed. His eyes were aching with tiredness, and there was still a lot of work to do. He would have some coffee later, but for now he had to focus on retrieving the files necessary for the company's duel disk that were corrupted the night before. Kaiba walked to the nearest computer, on which a young woman was busy on. "How is it going?" Kaiba asked, his rough voice surprising himself.

"According to Takeshi, we've managed to repair a good part of the final blueprints and completely recovered most of the prototypes," the woman said as she pushed her glasses back into place and opened a window, revealing a simple-looking design. Despite its outward appearance both Kaiba and his employee knew the months of work that went into the project. "Production will be delayed, of course, since there seems to be a few crucial files that were too muddled to repair, but things are looking a bit better. I only wonder how the company's stocks will be affected by this."

Kaiba grimaced. "It will be pretty bad for a few weeks, no doubt about that. But Kaiba Corporations has gone through much worse."

"Oh, that's good," sighed the woman. She was a high-ranking executive, and rather liked the salary and privileges that came along with her job too much to want to face being laid off. One look from her boss and her smile slid away quickly, but she knew that he did not really care about her personal motives so long as she did her job well enough.

"So things are looking better," the executive continued. "But, unfortunately we do have bad news. All of the work done on Project CATHRIN is too muddled to recover, so we're probably going to have to start from the ground up working on that."

"Yes. I expected that much."

"What? How could you have expected this?"

Kaiba leaned over his baffled employee and with a few keystrokes pulled up what remained of the Project details in the final duel disk's blueprint. Muddled was a euphemism. The screen was filled to the brim with fractured jumbles of binary code, with only a few words of the Project details remaining. The executive caught a few glimpses of words such as _"Cathode radiation index…" _and _"wave-particle duality…"_

Despite the woman's high rank in the Kaiba Corp. hierarchy, she had to admit that she did not know as much about CATHRIN as she pretended to. As far as she knew, only Kaiba, his younger brother, her superior that oversaw much of the company products' construction, and a few unknowns she heard about near the soda machine in the lounge knew enough about the Project to be involved in it. What she did know was vague, but from even the bits that she had filched by eavesdropping was enough to figure out that if CATHRIN panned out, the holographic effects on the duel disks would surpass anything that competitors, and even Kaiba Corp. itself, had ever fathomed. And she also overheard her superior telling Mokuba Kaiba, one afternoon a few months ago, that it could potentially be very, very dangerous.

"Well?" she asked her boss, eager to hear what he knew. Kaiba stared coldly at her.

"What?"

"How could you have foreseen this top-secret Project being found out about?"

Calmly, Kaiba closed the program, and leaned over towards the woman. Her heart always beat a little faster every time she was near her boss. Kaiba's skin glowed from the computer screen's light, and his dark blue eyes glittered with a mysterious sheen. Every strand of his silky brown hair was perfectly neat against the frame of his face, and all she wanted to do was to muss it up as they did, erm, inappropriate things in bed together.

She had never told anybody before, but the only reason she had sent her resume to Kaiba Corporations was to be closer to its CEO, and she imagined that the majority of women working here were motivated by the same thing.

He leaned over even more towards her, until their faces were a hand's span away. She would have thought that she was dreaming if not for the smell of Kaiba's spicy cologne permeating the air around them. She closed her eyes, wildly hoping for a kiss, even though they were in the middle of a room filled with so many other people…

"Why don't you eavesdrop by the water cooler like you usually do and find out yourself?"

And just like that, Kaiba was heading towards the door, putting his jacket on calmly, and his employee was left in her chair, disappointed beyond belief.

O O O O O

_**ISF:**__ Yes. A very short chapter after a very long absence. So sue me._

_**!!FIN!!**_


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten:

**Chapter Ten: Sunrise**

O O O O O

Yugi yawned, fixing his chain as he walked into the living room holding a phone in his hand. From the other end of the line, he could hear Joey's voice answering.

"You mean that some thugs broke into Tea's house with pictures of those two girls trying to find them?" Joey said incredulously.

"Yes. And we don't exactly know what we should be doing about this all. I've discussed it with Yami, but he doesn't really know what we could do until we knew for sure whether or not people are still tracking down Sarah and Mary. Most importantly, we don't know how they know about them and why they want them. I mean, it obviously has something to do with the two appearing out of thin air, but we just don't know where to go after that."

"Hm…." Joey said seriously, and Yugi tried not to laugh. He could imagine Joey stroking his chin with a deep, pondering look on his face, which of course would look completely ridiculous on him. Yugi cleared his thoughts and tried to pay attention to Joey.

"Well, you don't get girls zapping out of a duel disk everyday, I guess, so it's not that hard to find out. Somebody could have been watching you and Moneybags duel and saw the whole thing." Joey continued. "Maybe they have some sort of special powers or something that caused them to come here and those thugs want to know how they did it? Or maybe they're working for somebody that knows what it's all about? If you could find some way to put them out in public without putting them in danger, maybe, I dunno, you could lure the thugs and find out more."

Time and time again, Yugi was always surprised at how insightful Joey could be when he wanted to. He then thought about Joey dressed in a loincloth sitting on a mountain and tried not to giggle again. "That's actually a really good idea, Joey. Thanks for the idea," Yugi said. "Anyways, are you going to call Tristan and meet us up here soon?"

"Yeah. I'll be there in about…oh, twenty minutes."

"You sure you don't mean two hours, like last week?"

"Oh, shaddup. I'll be there on time, Yugi, you can count on me."

Joey hung up, and Yugi stood there in his living room staring thoughtfully out of the window for some time before clicking END on the phone. He could feel Yami's spirit appearing nearby him, and he turned around to look at his other self's translucent body.

"What are you thinking about, Yugi?" asked Yami. Yugi sighed.

"Oh. Lots of things, I suppose. How are we going to find out who the stalkers are, what's going to happen to Mary and Sarah if neither of us can protect them, whether or not they are even being honest about where they're from and what they know. It's all confusing."

"You don't have to let it be." Yami rested his ghostly hand on Yugi's solid, corporeal shoulder. "We must trust these two girls in order to understand them and do our best to protect them, and even if things do not go our way, if we can work together then we can overcome all of our obstacles. You know that, after being through so much."

"Hah. Yeah. Duelist Kingdom, Battle City, the Virtual World, Marik, and being connected with you, Pharaoh. But I've just never been through something like this. No matter how confusing and extraordinary things have gotten for you and I, everything was…real. I mean, it existed in our world and only ours. When I think about it being possible that there is another universe parallel to ours that our own world is dictated by, it honestly changes things. And then I get to thinking about all of the other worlds that could be out there and I get a huge headache. Oh. Well." Yugi sighed deeply, but recovered quickly. "We're starting to form a decent plan now, so I guess things are looking up."

"Never assume the best of things, Yugi. Always expect the worst. Always." was the Pharaoh's grim reply.

O O O O O

The sunrises here were beautiful, she had to admit.

Sarah was sitting by herself on a stoop, trash bag in hand. There were a lot of buildings around the Kame Game shop but if she looked to the east towards the beach not too far away, turned her head, and squinted her eyes a little it was possible to see a bit of the sunrise reflected off of a building's tinted windows. She was supposed to be taking out the trash. She had asked Yugi if there was anything that she could do, and despite Yugi's repeated refusals of letting her do anything around the house she saw a full trashcan in the kitchen and had taken the bag out. It didn't seem fair for her and Mary to be freeloading off of these people, no matter whether they were real or not.

Suppose that they were real. What would that make the other "real" world, or rather, the world that Sarah and Mary existed in? It had only been yesterday that they had disappeared in a flash of static and electrical energy, but even so as the minutes ticked by their world felt more and more blurry, kind of like a long, beautiful dream that begins to lose its vivid colors as soon as morning comes but in the corner of the mind that dream still exists, no matter how faded and grey. Sarah ran her fingers through her hair and suddenly pulled her hand away from her face. The skin seemed shinier, and the outlines sharper.

Holy shit. How long had that been like that? Did it happen gradually or was she like this the moment that she and Mary had come to this place, which apparently was called Domino City, according to her sister?

Sighing, Sarah rubbed her eyes and tried to remember the last thing her father had said before he had sped out of the driveway to work. Probably something related to picking up Mary's cards out of the yard.

So she and her sister could quite possibly be stuck for all eternity in an alien universe, and all she had to remember her father was him talking about her stinking sister's cards. Wonderful.

But thing could be worse. They could always be worse. Sarah stood up, stretching herself leisurely before starting the walk towards the trash bin.

She should probably learn how to play those stupid card games and get a deck or something like her sister. They seemed to be very popular here, and from what she could see they were a pretty big thing. Kind of like football. Or soccer. Or some other sport. It would be useful, anyways.

The last thing Sarah remembered before being knocked unconscious was a whizzing sound flying right by her head as she was throwing the trash away.

O O O O O

Explosions are so much louder in real life than on any action movie. This was what Yugi thought a split second before he felt the Puzzle take over and Yami's presence replacing his own.

Yami saw that the windows facing the front lawn had shattered, and that half of the lawn itself was on fire. Tea was screaming. Mary was crying. Yami didn't know where Sarah was, but he knew that Yugi's grandfather had gone to the store and he was probably safe so that was one good thing. He ran outside and saw Sarah in a crumpled heap on the cracked windshield of a nearby car, her clothes smoking. Not so far away, perhaps on other streets, Yami heard the distant booms of other explosions and screams.

"Yugi."

Yami turned his head and saw a person standing in the middle of the road, amidst the chaos of people running and screaming and shrieking for mercy from God or whomever. For a brief second he had thought that it was only a little black-haired girl wearing expensive clothes, but in one blink he realized that he was wrong and it was an adult, a sinister woman wearing a trench coat and a cloth tied around the bottom half of her face, who had a blackened, half-melted duel disk in one hand and a deck of cards in the other. She eyed Yami lazily with yellow-gold eyes.

"We duel," she said.

O O O O O

"Joey!" Tristan yelled to his comrade as they helped people escape from a store that had caught fire. His eyes burned from the smoke. "We have to find out—"

"—if Yugi's okay!" finished Joey. He did a quick body count and figured everybody had gotten out well enough. "Let's go, NOW!"

He was already halfway up the street. Tristan could barely keep up with him.

"What's happening?" Tristan said, still trying to run.

"I dunno, but I think I have a good idea where we can find out!"

O O O O O

_**ISF: **__Duhn duhn DUUUUUHN. The drama! You peeps should review to show support for the story and figure out how it ends! Sarah…she can't be dead yet…or can she?_

_**!!FIN!!**_


	11. Chapter 11

**Cat Eyes**

_**Posted: **__July 16, 2009_

_**ISF:**__Ugh, FINALLY. Every time I thought about writing this chapter, my heart wasn't in it. But I bit the bullet and managed to scrape up a few tasty morsels for any of you readers still out there._

_I'm kind of wondering, though...it feels like I've outgrown this story. Like I'm another person continuing someone else's fic. It's strange. But hopefully, I'll still be posting chapters, however slowly they'll appear. Eheheh..._

_I want this story to have twenty-five chapters, give or take a couple. I just wish that I can stick with it to make it happen. I don't want the posts to be so sporadic. I need to start posting more regularly. Encourage me, you guys! Kick my butt into shape!_

o o o o o

"Mokuba Kaiba to the front office," a voice on the intercom droned. Mokuba looked to his teacher, who gave him a short nod, and Mokuba packed up his schoolthings into his backpack and left the classroom. He knew why he was being called. He had never been called to the front office, save for the times when his brother came to the school to pick him up early.

And he was glad for it, too. His school had half-days on Saturday. He didn't understand why his brother made him go. He had near perfect grades as it was. Surely missing just a mere half a day of school a week wouldn't put him that far behind.

Sure enough, Mokuba was right. His brother was there and sitting in a chair, his legs crossed in an almost feminine manner that starkly contrasted his rigid demeanor. Mokuba could tell, despite Seto's meticulous attempt at disguising it, that his brother had not yet slept since Mokuba had seen him last night. The two left, side by side, getting into the back of a limousine parked outside the school's door.

"What am I being picked up early for?" Mokuba asked. "Seto, you look awful. Why didn't you sleep last night?"

"Too much work." Seto replied. "I took a nap while coming to pick you up."

"Seto, I know that you're lying," Mokuba said in a serious tone. His brother shrugged and made no further attempt to assuage him. They both knew that Seto could not sleep anywhere except in his room. Mokuba's heart skipped a beat when he thought about it.

He remembered what had happened when Seto had fallen asleep at the dinner table when Gozaburo was still alive.

"You never answered the first question."

Seto sighed. "I know who hacked into the database. I need your help."

Suddenly, the limosine screeched to a stop. Mokuba lurched forward, but Seto managed to catch him. He pounded on the glass window for the driver. "What do you think you're doing?" Seto roared at him.

The divider slid open. "I'm sorry, Mister Kaiba, but we can't go any further." The driver pointed ahead of him. Seto and Mokuba craned their necks to see a huge pile of cars ahead.

"What in the world...?" Mokuba opened the door to get out, despite Seto's warning to stay in the car. The two brothers looked at the pileup. People were being pulled out of their totalled cars by police officers, fireman, and ambulence workers, and a huge crowd had gathered.

Mokuba pulled on one man's shirt. "Excuse me, sir, is everyone okay?"

"Looks so," the man said, not turning his head from the mess. "Nobody seems to be badly hurt. Ain't that amazing? Look at that carnage." He pointed in awe.

"Do you know what caused the accident?" The man shook his head.

"All I know is that no one's getting past this intersection."

"What?" said Mokuba despairingly. "We need to get to Kaiba Corp. Can't we just walk--?"

"Can't walk," the man cut him off.

"But why--?"

The man pointed past the wreckage. The crowd was not gathered by the wreck. They were at the edge of the intersection. People were knocking, patting, and pushing with all their mights at what looked to be...

Nothing.

They were pushing at thin air.

Seto grimaced. He watched the pedestrians throw things at what wasn't there, only to have them bounce back as if hitting an invisible wall. On the other side, everything looked normal. Except nothing was moving over there. The streets looked deserted. Everything on the opposite side of the wall looked shadowy and blue, almost as if it were dusk. "Mokuba." He nodded at his little brother, motioning at him to follow. Seto began walking briskly down the street, his brother struggling to keep up with Seto's long strides.

"Mister Kaiba, what do you--?" The driver tried to say, before both Seto and Mokuba smoothly cut him off as they walked past him.

"We don't care," they said in unison. The driver looked on in astonishment. Evidently, there was more of Seto Kaiba in the young boy than he had once thought.

o o o o o

Yami had accepted the woman's challenge. He had never refused a game before in his life.

The arena was set, dead center in the middle of the street. Tea was crouched on the sidelines, trying to nurse Sarah back to consciousness and console Mary at the same time. Mary was still sniffling and wiping her nose, but a fierce spark seemed to glow in her bright eyes as she looked from one duelist to another. A duelist with spiked hair, a grim mouth, and violet eyes wise beyond their years. A duelist with a twisted black trench coat and beady golden eyes, almost cat like. Mary Caldwell was about to witness a duel. A real, live duel.

Yami had already equipped himself with his deck and duel disk. He watched as the strange yellow-eyed woman slowly, almost tenderly, slid her black, misshapened disk onto her arm, and carefully pressed the power button. Almost at once, the Pharaoh was almost not sure whether or not the woman and disk were two separate entities. The disk had molded perfectly into skin, muscles and bone, like a mutated scythe protruding out from her forearm. They both shuffled their decks. The woman drew her cards as if she were unsheathing swords.

"We begin."

o o o o o

"Crap!" Joey managed to dodge a car, flying through the air towards him, while not missing a step as he and Tristan ran. The car smashed into a brick wall and toppled over three times before coming to a stop next to a fire hydrant. "How the heck did all of this happen so quickly?"

"Dunno!" Tristan shot back as he tried to beat flames out of his jacket sleeve and run at the same time. "I just wish that Yugi would pick up his cell phone!" The streets were chaos. Windows were smashed. Everything that was combustible had in fact combusted. It was like a bomb had gone off and yet there were no victims.

The streets were empty.

"Hey...." Tristan slowed to halt, looking around him. "Where do you think everybody went?"

"Eh?" Joey, still running, turned to look back at his friend. He tripped over a detached, blackened car bumper and crashed headfirst into a car. He jumped up immediately, rubbing his bruised nose. "What are you talking about, Tristan, we saw people in the store we were inside, and then...wait a second...that was the last time we saw anyone!"

The two stared in awe as they circled around in the middle of the street. Amidst a burning city, they seemed to be the only two people around for blocks.

"Hello? HELLO!" Tristan called. The crackling of fire was the only reply that he got. Joey swore and kicked at the detached bumper he had tripped over.

"This is stupid!" Joey said. "Why are we the only ones here?"

"Let's see...." Tristan mused. "There was at the store, and then we were running over to Yugi's place. I saw some people back then, too, but...." He raked his fingers through his hair at he thought. "I didn't realize it, but after that, we saw less and less people in the streets."

"You're right!" said Joey. "And after that explosion just now, I didn't see anyone!"

"Explosion?" Tristan frowned. Joey nodded furiously.

"Two explosions, actually. Well, they weren't really explosions like the bomb ones that went off a few minutes ago, but whatever made that car fly at me. There wasn't any shrapnel or nothing in the air, so they weren't bombs that went off--"

"Shrapnel?"

"Come on, Tristan, you know what shrapnel is! It's the pieces of the bomb that fly out. It's not the explosions that kill people, usually, but the shrapnel--"

"Oh, save your one speech about science that you even know anything about!" Tristan said impatiently. "What about the explosions?'"  
"Yeah, they weren't like bombs going off, but I know I felt something."

"Felt what?"

"I dunno what it was, I just..._felt _it. It was like I felt everything around me was being sucked away. Didn't you feel anything?"

Tristan almost began to yell at Joey to stop messing around, but then suddenly realized with a that he was not making it up. He was busy trying to put out the flames on his jacket a few moments ago, and stumbled over something. As he struggled to maintain his balance, he felt like his insides had been jolted out of his body, but he assumed it was from the stumble.

"Did...something just happen that got rid of the people?"

"That's stupid, Joey! Why are we still here?"

"Why are we the _only_ ones here?" Joey snapped back.

Tristan opened his mouth to retort, but then paused and shut it slowly. He made a good point. He carelessly glanced at the sky, then did a double take. "Wha...look!"

The two boys looked wonderstruck at the sky. It was dark. But it was still only mid-day. Tristan checked his watch. _One thirty p.m. Hey... _ He stared for a few seconds at his watch before speaking near-tonelessly to Joey. "My watch has stopped. The seconds aren't moving."

"Cheap piece of junk, then."

"No...check your cell phone." Shrugging, Joey pulled his phone out of his back pocket. Tristan did the same. "Hey, the time's stopped on my phone!"

"And mine." Flipping his phone shut, Tristan glanced around momentarily before beginning to walk in the general direction towards Yugi's house. "I don't even know if we can find Yugi there, but we might as well look, right? Can't hurt."

The two boys made their way through the empty streets, unaware of the two people behind them. The nameless shadows looked at one another and nodded. They pointed their arms at the boys. They had half-melted duel disks attached to them. They both pressed a blue button. Each disk glowed a strange color before shooting a thin beam of light, aimed at Joey and Tristan.

o o o o o

_**ISF**__**: **__Aaand, that's all for now. Damn, that took a long time to type up! Normally, when I start a chapter, it only takes a couple of hours to finish, but this one took twice as long. Ugh. Must be out of practice. I remember back when I was posting TOAYGOSF (for you newbies, it's best not to know what that stands for...for you oldbies, good lord, how did you stick with me after that travesty?), I updated Sunday night, the wee hours of the night, technically Monday morning. I should get back into that habit. Keep my fanfiction claws sharpened nicely._

_Anyways, please leave a review and let me know how you feel about this chapter, or if you have any questions or complaints._

_FIN_


	12. Chapter 12

**Malachite Green**

_posted: July 31, 2009_

_**ISF:**__ Finally, I've finished this chapter! It's a tad shorter than I'd like, but I'd rather not wait any longer to post it, I'm sure plenty of you are eager to see what will happen next._

_An Author's Note for the duels. Any monsters summoned will have, in parentheses, its star level and its attack and defense, in this order: (level, ATK/DEF)._

_-_

o o o o o

-

Yami and the strange woman were in the middle of their duel. Not surprisingly, Yami was playing incredibly well. Both he and the woman had yet to lose any life points. Yami had an Obnoxious Celtic Guardian (lvl 4, 1400/1200) and a Mystical Elf (lvl 4, 800/2000), respectively in attack and defense mode, on the field, while the woman had two facedown monsters. Yami watched from the corner of his eye Tea tending Sarah's head wound (the girl was still unconscious). Mary was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk next to the two with her head propped up on her palms. The tears had barely dried on her cheeks, and yet all of her attention was vested in the ongoing duel, her bright eyes giving away the intelligence that she lacked in any of her other features. Yami could tell that the young girl understood the concept of Duel Monsters very well.

He turned his attention back towards the cat-like woman. She had introduced herself at the beginning of the duel with a one word comment: "Felina". She was not one for talking very much. Yami ventured to guess that was her name.

She drew a card, gripping it between her middle and forefinger. Her nails were long and painted an opium purple. She gave the card a careless glance and set it onto the field. An All-Seeing White Tiger (lvl 3 1300/500) with the same colored eyes as its duelist materialized. It stared beadily at Yami, who found it strange that such a hologram had such detail to it. Its fur was fluffy and seemingly shone under invisible moonlight, and its claws were large and glinted threateningly. It was more corporeal than any of his monsters. "Felina" placed one card facedown and silently ended her turn. Yami drew and examined his hand. He assumed that the facedown card the woman had placed on the field was a trap or quick-play magic card. It was safest to dispense of it somehow.

"I activate the Heavy Storm magic card!" Yami slid it into his duel disk. A large, holographic gust of wind was generated in the middle of the playing field. It blew away Felina's card. She nor her tiger blinked at the storm or its effect.

"And now," Yami continued in his thunderous voice, "I switch my Mystical Elf into attack mode!" The elf, who had been kneeling in a praying position, stood up and drew a sword from her robes. "Go, Celtic Guardian, attack a facedown monster!" The Celtic Guardian leapt towards the card and stabbed its sword through it. The monster was revealed to be a Dark Cat With White Tail ( lvl 2, 800/500). The Celtic Guardian's sword had pierced through the Cat's heart. It gave an horrible, piercing yowl of agony, more chillingly realistic than Yami had heard any Duel Monster to make.

Celtic Guardian leapt back into position, and Yami, to his horror, noticed a thin line of blood clinging to its sword.

"What...?" He was rendered speechless. All duel monsters, after being destroyed, were meant to disappear without a trace. He looked at Felina, who saw the astonishment on his face. She closed her eyes and raised the arm which wore her burned duel disk.

"No...your duel disk has something to do with this?" Yami said. She nodded slowly.

"They are solid. Corporeal," she said bluntly. Felina brought her All-Seeing White Tiger back to her hand. "You must take two monsters off of your side of the field." Yami picked their cards up. Now he had nothing protecting him.

Expecting her to re-summon her Tiger, Yami was surprised to see her summon an ugly, humanoid snake. It was a Spherous Lady (lvl 3 400/1400). Felina then flipped her monster. A strange, vicious rat-like animal gnashed its teeth at Yami. "Milus Radiant (lvl 1 300/250). It increases the attack of all Earth type monsters on the field." The Spherous Lady began to ooze drops of venom from its mouth (ATK 400 -- 900). "I equip Beast Fangs to her." The snake woman's teeth grew longer and sharper, increasing its attack and defense by 300. Almost casually, Felina made a motion with her hand, and Milus Radiant lunged at Yami, biting his duel disk arm. Yami winced. Its teeth had broken his skin.

"What is this sorcery?" Yami said incredulously. But his question was left unanswered as he looked up from his arm and found the Spherous Lady snarling in his face for a moment before biting him on his shoulder. Yami felt the wound burning painfully as the venom from its fangs reacted to his body. Tea and Mary bought gasped, but for different reasons, Tea being truly worried for her friend's safety and Mary being merely amused by the action.

"Yugi!" Tea yelled. "Are you alright?"

"Of course he's not alright, you ninny, he just got bitten by a vampire snake!" snapped Mary, eyes still on the duel. Yami heard neither, as he was struggling to keep his balance. His life points dipped to 2500. He stared grimly at Felina.

"I suppose that my holographic monsters will have no physical affect on your person?" he asked, already knowing the answer. The cat-eyed woman merely shook her head.

-

o o o o o

-

"Look out!" Tristan yanked Joey to the side. Two lasers nearly grazed the two of them. They skimmed past the boys and hit a nearby car, and to the boys shock, the car vanished in a ball of static and flames.

"That one was so close!"

Joey and Tristan jerked around and saw two men with strange duel disks on their arms surveying them. The comment had been made by an enormously grotesque man. His whole body was engulfed in rolls of fat, and his piggy eyes were nearly closed shut because of the puffiness of his face, though the greed in them was still easy to see. The other man was small, lean, and wore horn-rimmed glasses and a perfectly white lab coat. He had protective goggles hanging from his neck, and occasionally twitched. Unlike the obese man, his face was calculating and concealed much of his emotion.

"What did I tell you, Bolono?" The man in the lab coat said to the fat one. "It is imperative that you get a good look at anybody's faces before capturing them."

"Eheheheh, you're right, Doctor!" Bolono's words sounded like a mix between grunts and squeals. "Lessee now..." He took what looked like a tiny black book filled with photographs out of his pocket and glanced through it. "There they are! Ehehehe! Joseph Wheeler and Tristan Taylor!"

"Hey now, don't you ever call me by anything other than 'Joey', you hear that?" yelled the blonde. Tristan managed to keep his composure.

"Who the heck are you two and what do you want with us?" he asked. The "Doctor" made a jerk that was supposed to be a bow.

"I am Dr. Malachite," he said with a clipped accent. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Name's Bolono. Ehehehe," the fat man tipped his gaudy fedora towards the boys. "An' it's not much pleasure for me! Ehehe."

"You didn't answer his question, you jerks!" Joey snarled, almost dog-like. "What do you think you're doing, shooting laser beams at us like that? You want to get the crap kicked out of you?"

"I'm afraid that it is not us who should be fearful for our lives, but you two boys," said Dr. Malachite, his glasses glinting in an almost malicious way. He pressed a button on his duel disk and it shifted into dueling position. "We challenge you to a duel."

Joey was about to yell back a rude retort, but was interrupted by Malachite's colleague. "Hang on a second, Doctor..." Bolono said slowly. "I don' understan' why we can't capture them now instead o' doing this dueling thing with 'em—"

"I already told you this already!" Malachite snapped. "We have orders not to capture them, only to challenge them to a duel first! how many times must I repeat myself?"

"What makes you think that we're gonna duel you clowns anyway?" Joey barked. The Doctor pushed up his glasses and raised his disk arm. It began to glow blue.

"Of course, we were also told that we were allowed to use necessary force if facing noncompliance...."

"Getting my cards out, getting them out...."

"Hang on a second, Joey," Tristan whispered to his friend. "Shouldn't we think this through, dueling someone that we don't even know and could kill us? Neither of us have duel disks, and I'm haven't dueled in ages and have never place in a tournament. You sure this is a good idea?"

"...No, not really," Joey answered honestly. "But it's the only thing we can do. We'll duel them, and when it's over, we'll bolt when their guards are down, okay?"

"It's a plan, then," he whispered. Malachite tapped his foot impatiently.

"Are you ready to begin or not?" he asked the two. Bolono pulled two standard-issue duel disks out of a huge bag he had and tossed them to the two boys, who caught them in mid-air. They grimaced. The disks were coated in what seemed to be grease and batter from fried foods. Malachite continued. "This will be a standard, two-against-two duel. Failure to comply with the rules or refusal to duel means we _will_ capture you, so do not attempt to cheat or stop mid-duel. Do you understand?"

"Fine, fine, whatever!" Joey said, as he and Tristan placed their decks into the respective slots. Joey's deck was clearly broken in well, though his cards also appeared to be taken good care of. Tristan's deck, on the other hand, had a thin layer of dust from lack of use and looked brand new. They activated their disks, and got into position.

"IT'S TIME TO DUEL!" all four said in unison.

-

o o o o o

-

_**ISF:**__ Whew, that chapter was a bit of a doozy to write! I like researching the mechanics of dueling, but it's quite a hassle to type it all up while being sure that you're not making a mistake in damage calculation and whatnot. If any of y'all readers caught a mistake, please inform me so I can make a correction. Thanks for reading, and be sure to drop a line or two for me!_

_FIN_


	13. Chapter 13

_**CATHRIN REVISITED**_

_posted: 9/07/09_

_**ISF:**__ Since there were only a couple very short reviews, I'll just take the time to graciously thank __**sigourney1636 **__and __**MissDomaYuset**__ for commenting. Doma, it sure is nice to hear from you after all this time! But anyways, this chapter is short, but very crucial, and has a ton of interesting plot in it. _

___Also, because I think will help shed some light for some readers for this chapter, which has a lot of science in it_

___**A SCIENCE LESSON (NOTE: I MAY BE WRONG ON SOME POINTS)**_

___An event horizon is basically the border of a black hole, which is what forms after the core of an super red-giant turns to solid iron and the star itself supernovas. Black holes are infinitely dense, so nothing, not even light, can escape its gravitational pull. Any light that passes an event horizon is unobservable, which of course is why it took us so long to discover black holes, and any matter that gets sucked into a black hole, according to Stephen Hawking, would be stretched out like a piece of spagetti. Copied from Wikipediia since it's worded so well: "Some researchers proposed that when a black hole forms, a big bang occurs at the core, which creates a new universe that expands into extra dimensions outside of the parent universe."_

___Also according to Wikipedia, some scientists believe that a worm hole (a means of "shortcutting" through space and time) is made out of a black hole, which sucks things in, and a white hole, which basically spits things out. This means that there could potentially be millions of universes all connected with one another by worm holes! Isn't that fascinating? Since it's pretty obvious anyways, I'll just spoil it and say that this is the science behind the Caldwell's appearance in the YGO universe. How they do this by means of a television will be explained in this chapter._

_So without further ado, it's time for your feature presentation!_

o o o o o

The room was dimly lit by a single, dim light bulb hanging from the ceiling, casting a yellowish glare on everything in the secret room located in the Kaiba mansion; large machines that hummed gently; a lonely bookcase stuffed with so many folders and large, boring books about math, science, and programming that its shelves sagged under the weight of it all; one small refrigerator with a well-used coffee maker sitting on top of it; two folding chairs, one shoved into a dark corner carelessly, and the other sitting beside a large card table that held up everything that Seto needed and had arranged neatly to get at an arm's reach. There was a top-of-the-line laptop and an older, obsolete-looking desktop, a calculator, notepad, pen, a coffee mug, a glass and a crystal bottle only a quarter full of amber liquid.

"Seto," Mokuba said indignantly. "You said you stopped drinking that stuff!"

Seto sat down in his folding chair and pulled the spare one up beside him. "I lied."

Biting back the shout that was on the tip of his tongue, Mokuba sat in the seat his brother offered him. "So you know who messed with the company's database?"

"I have a pretty good idea." Seto reached for the laptop one the other side of the table and opened it, turning it towards him and Mokuba. He had pulled out a CD case from his briefcase, opened it, and placed the disk in the drive. A program window opened, running a jumble of numbers and letters that Mokuba recognized as his own work, then loaded completely. The main screen was rather garish, decorated by moving images and flashing lights. Kaiba began typing, navigating through the complicated-looking program.

"You remember what I told you about CATHRIN," he said to Mokuba, a statement more than a question.

"Of course. You had me convert all of the figures you came up with for the program into binary and hexadecimal code. You never were patient with doing that, and you said that my brain was like a calculator."

"Yes. That, and the fact that it's boring." Mokuba grinned at Seto's retort. He had to give that much to his brother. Computers could go through thousands of commands a second, requiring huge amounts of coding in which one had to convert into either binary or hexadecimal, both based on the exponents of the number 2. It was simple enough work to begin with, but the numbers would get huge very quickly, and going through it by hand, necessary in order to keep the program from potentially getting saved onto the flashdrive of a spy from another company, required a mind able to go through the mind-numbing, repetitive arithmetic it required. Mokuba, with his gift for factoring numbers in his head instantly, was better at such calculation than even Seto, which he was quite proud of. Programming itself, on the other hand, was something that made Mokuba's brain hurt but Seto enjoyed immensely.

"I never did tell you exactly what CATHRIN was for."

"No. Only that it would revolutionize the world of virtual games and CGI."

"Yes. CATHRIN was a program I had began to design myself. At first I wanted to create sharper holograms for our duel disks where the monsters and effects would be more solid, have more texture, and have lighting that would match the surrounding area's illumination. I managed to succeed with the next line of duel disks the company is producing. But underneath the cover of duel-disk production, I began to work on a secret project within that project, which I named CATHRIN, for a reason I am about to explain to you. While researching how I could possibly do this, I ran across a book about cathode rays." He motioned towards a book on the table. Mokuba looked at it. It was a very old book with a herd of horses stampeding out of an 50s-style TV as its cover art. It was titled, _The Future of Television!_

"It is an old book, as you see, very outdated and full or wildly inaccurate claims about future technology. But it had a very intriguing section discussing the science of cathode rays. Cathode ray tubes are what old television models used. They are vacuum tubes with no air inside of them, and electricity runs through it, heats a filament, and causes the atoms of the electrodes inside of the tube to break down, creating a stream of electrons and generating fluorescent light." Here, Seto went on into a long, lengthy explanation about the mechanics of cathode ray tubes, prompting Mokuba to interrupt him and tell him to get to the point. Seto pulled up a document on the CATHRIN program.

"At first glance, cathode ray tubes would seem to be of little use to holography. They are obsolete, large, and composed of rather dangerous materials like lead. But I thought about how cathode radiation could be applied to creating holographic images.

"There is a concept known as wave-particle duality that states all energy, and thus all matter, exhibits both wave and particle properties. And then I began to suppose things. Suppose that, if cathode tubes could cause the atoms in an electrode to become light, could an instrument be built that could change light into matter and vice versa? If I could create that—"

"Then you could create holographic images that were solid," interjected Mokuba, whose eyes grew wide at the thought.

"Exactly. Not even Noah or my own virtual world offered realism to rival the real world. Oh, sure, a person could "feel" and "taste" to a certain extent while plugged into the game, but the sensations were created by electrical impulses sent through the brain artificially to trick it into thinking it was experiencing these feelings. Even so, it was not truly real and any person could tell the difference between the virtual world and reality, just like how one can tell that a holographic monster summoned by a duel disk is not real. It simply does not look solid nor does it create any shadows that match the lighting of the area.

"But I did not know enough about such science in order to build it myself. Gozaburo's training involved formal sciences like statistics and linguistics, and had hardly any focus on chemistry or physics. So I had to commission a quantum physicist to investigate on the matter. In about a year, and a good deal of my money not charged to Kaiba Corp's credit, he had created a machine. I have the details of its construction both here," he pointed at the computer screen, "and there, in a report." He motioned toward the bookshelf with a row of folders. "But I do not understand a lot of the intricate details myself."

"So what happened? Did the machine work?" asked Mokuba.

"Yes and no," Seto answered. We did a test run of the machine. This was about six month ago. The only people that witnessed the event were me, the physicist, two bodyguards, and the head of Kaiba Corp's Security, Roland. Our goal was to create a replica hologram of a test subject that would be indistinguishable from the original. We used a sparrow."

Seto massaged his temples, and drew himself a glass of the amber liquid in the crystal bottle.

"It was a catastrophe."

"Why? Was that because it didn't work?"

"No." Seto downed his drink. "It was because it _did_." Kaiba clicked a button on his laptop. Mokuba, astonished, watched a blurry, black and white video where he vaguely recognized his brother and Roland. But most of the video was unwatchable due to what looked like smoke and sparks concealing everything except nearing the end of the video where Mokuba clearly saw a long, strange shape moving briefly into view. It sent shivers down his spine. The video ended, pausing on the shot of the being.

"For a brief moment, everybody including myself saw two sparrows, side by side, exactly the same down to the tips of their feathers. But then the real sparrow exploded."

He reached for the bottle of scotch again and poured himself another drink. "That in itself was a little distressing, but ultimately not that big of a deal since we didn't use a human subject, thankfully. But a split second after that happened, something appeared in the room. It appeared in a ball of flames and what looked like static, and it clearly wasn't from this world. It was a creature that looked like nothing I had ever seen or read about, not even in mythology or science fiction." He finished off his drink again. "It reared up, ready to attack one of the bodyguards, but just before it struck, it dissolved into a pile of muck.

"The scientist I fired, the bodyguards bribed into silence, then relocated to a different district, and Roland sworn to secrecy. I am not an expert in science and I can only make guesses as to how it happened, but the physicist stammered something about that he had created a means of transporting one animal to another universe by the means of something like a microscopic, momentary event horizon, and so as not to upset the balance of our dimension by suddenly lacking matter, had another body of matter...." Seto began to mumble to himself incoherently, lost in thought. He reached again to pour another drink, but Mokuba knocked it away. It spun in its place for a moment before falling over the edge of the table and shattering on the floor.

"Stop it, Seto! Stop drinking!" Mokuba cried. "Why didn't you tell me any of this?"

Seto looked at Mokuba, and he noticed just how deep the shadows underneath Seto's eyes had become in the past few days. And Mokuba came to the shocking realization that he had not slept since the two girls had appeared in the middle of his duel, that he had been working not for the company, but as a means of frantically trying to fix the horrible mistake that he had made.

"You knew all along that those girls were telling the truth and you acted like they were crazy!"

"I had to. Who would believe me?" Seto's eyes were blank, empty of nothing but exhaustion and frustration. "Dr. Malachite managed to created another machine. He is working with LoliCOM, and they broke through our firewalls to try to ruin our database to destroy our company. I've taken steps to keep the company safe, but we have a much bigger problem on our hands with Malachite playing God."

"We have to do something, Seto! You can't leave everything the way it is now, you have to fix this!"

"I _can't_, Mokuba." Seto laid his head on his arms, exhaustion finally setting in. "I'm trying, but I _can't."_

o o o o o

It had taken a while, but the inevitable had come. Yami defeated Felina, and her life points ticked down to zero. The game was over. He turned towards Tea, Mary, and Sarah...

An ominous sizzling sound filled the air. Yugi saw the horrified faces of Tea and Mary, and he whirled around to face the yellow-eyed woman again. She was still standing, emotionlessly, the same as before. She looked backed at Yami with her jaw set in stubborn resistance, her golden cat eyes glaring at him.

Her eyes began to melt, and then her whole face. Soon the only thing that was left was a puddle of blackened muck and the remaining bits of plastic that were her duel disk....

o o o o o

_**ISF: **__It took more than a month, but I managed to get this chapter done. The research into the science behind CATHRIN was surprisingly enjoyable. I learned a good deal about physics and the electromagnetic spectrum. I used Wikipedia and a few other websites to research, but I knew about hexadecimal and binary and how to convert them from decimal form from my Computer class I'm taking this semester in college. Quite interesting, actually!_

_If any of you readers out there are into science and math, please feel free to contact me and correct any mistakes I made. I know that I wrote technobabble to make CATHRIN sound feasible, which it certainly isn't, but I would like to know how to make it more believable._

_Also, did anybody catch an reference to the Abridged Series in there? Props to anybody that did!_

_FIN_


	14. Chapter 14

**Flames and Tears**

posted: 9/21/09

_**ISF: **__Ah, finally! This chapter was a bit tough to write, since I'm in college now, and don't have the drive or time to work on it. Plus, the internet in my dorm is down. I'm hanging out in the student lounge getting this done. There may be some typos, now, but hey, take what you get! Thanks to __**MissDomaYuset**__ (loyal reviewer!) and __**Distant-Moon **__for reviewing, I'd say more but I'm strapped for time blah blah ENJOY THE CHAPTER._

o o o o o

Yami swore, wincing at the rubbing alcohol that Tea was using to clean the wounds he received from Felina's monsters. Aside from the throbbing pain in his shoulder from the Spherous Lady's attack, he was fine, though more than a little battered; if anything, he feared Tea and her first aid kit, which brought searing stings of agony, more so than the pain of battle, which had already ebbed away to a dull ache and stiffness.

"Just a moment more, Yugi, I'm almost done," Tea said to him, wrapping gauze around his exposed shoulder.

"It's _Yami_, Tea," snapped Mary smart-aleck-like, always one for specifics. "It's so obvious that it's Yami and not Yugi, he grows like a foot taller! And I don't have any idea why all of you guys keep on referring to him as Yugi, they're completely different people, they don't even sound alike—"

"Shut...the...hell...up..." Sarah ground out through her teeth. She had recovered her consciousness only just after Felina disintegrated into sludge, and was sporting a still-bleeding gash on the back of her head. Tea had managed to patch it up well enough without needing to cut off her hair, and while Tea cleaned the wound she and the two others brought Sarah up to date with the events that aspired. She blearily watched them with clouded eyes, remnants of her head trauma still affecting her ability to think clearly. Yami was stoically silent and Tea attempted to talk before being interrupted by Mary and giving up. Mary had spent the last fifteen minutes describing in detail the "absolutely awesome duel" which had just taken place, speaking excitedly about the cards chains, graphics and sound effects. Sarah was used to bearing this burden, but, understandably, the events of the day were clearly wearing her patience thin.

"Geez, Sarah, what crawled up your butt this morning? Woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something?" Mary said, her high-pitched voice especially mocking.

"I was just knocked unconscious, probably have a concussion, and woke up to find the block an apocalyptic wasteland."

"Oh, why do you have to be such a stick in the mud? You're always trying to ruin everything interesting or halfway exciting, and I'm sick of it! This is the best day I've had since, well, yesterday!" She babbled like a brook, her conversation degenerating into the sort of talking one usually finds on fan forums. "...let's see, Joey should be dueling somebody about now, but Kaiba usually doesn't start dueling until way into the season, unless you count the first episode...."

"Mary, this isn't fun for me, you know..." began Yami, clearly frustrated. Mary paid him no mind.

"Somebody who doesn't usually duel will probably do so this time around, it seems like. Tristan? Bakura? Duke? Ooh, I hope it's Bakura, that would be so cool—"

"Mary, don't you think that—"

"Be quiet, _Tea_, I wasn't talking to you!" yelled Mary. "I don't know who the enemy's going to be, but it should be somebody obvious, like how it was with Marik—"

At that moment, Sarah had thrown herself on her sister.

"What is _wrong _with you, you stupid, spoiled child?!" Sarah snarled at her sister, shaking her so roughly by the shoulders that Mary's neck looked like it would snap. "Were you dropped on your head as a baby? Are you mentally handicapped?" Yami and Tea did nothing, shocked into silence at Sarah's sudden lack of composure.

"S...stop, I can't...." Mary sputtered, her teeth rattling in her head.

"This isn't a game for me!" Sarah screamed, clearly beginning to lose her mind. Her face was reddening. Veins popped out from her neck. Tiny flecks of foam clung to her teeth. "This isn't fun to be knocked out and have a bleeding head wound! Everybody's gone! We're in a different dimension with no way to get home and to see our father, our only family, ever again and you don't care, you don't even_ care, do you? Do you? Because this is just a game to you!_ Yugi's home and store is blown up! He's been torn about by holograms! Look, just...just _look, LOOK at this place!_" She motioned furiously at the surrounding buildings. "Do you know how many millions of dollars in property damage this is? Do you know how much money it costs? Do you know how much the government will have to take out of programs to pay for this? That it could cause thousands of people with families to feed to lose their jobs, that people are probably dying in the streets right now? You don't care, you don't _care! LOOK AT ME!_" She started to slap the girl. Yami and Tea sprung into action, prying Sarah away from Mary.

She struggled momentarily before giving up. When they were sure she would not attack Mary again, the two let go of her arms. Sarah dusted off her clothing. Her face was turned towards Mary. Tea looked at Sarah. Her face was a pale, bloodless white and shadows sat underneath her eyes. They had a cold, sparkling sheen in them, yet almost looked empty.

"It doesn't mean anything to you, does it?" Sarah said coldly. Mary was on all fours, face towards the ground, crying silently, her bright blonde curls tumbling over her face. Her faint sniffles and the crackling of fire were the only noises which hung in the air.

"Our father could be dead in a ditch and it wouldn't even matter to you."

Mary hiccupped and wiped her eyes that were hidden behind golden bangs.

Everybody was silent. Sarah stared for what seemed like an eternity. Mary continued to weep silently. Tea and Yami did nothing, perhaps not quite sure what to do in this situation. Many seconds, possibly minutes, ticked by, but there was no way of measuring how much time had passed; all of the clocks and phones had stopped.

Finally, a wave of absolute disgust washed over Sarah's features. She grimaced at Mary as if the girl were the lowest slime imaginable, past the point where one ceased pretending not to notice it and looked over the offending person with complete and utter repulsion. Sarah turned around and, without a word, began to walk away down the street.

"Hey!" Tea ran towards her and grabbed her arm.

Sarah jerked it away. "Don't touch me!" she snarled.

"Sarah." Yami's voice was strong and imperious, yet had a soothing quality to it that resonated with wisdom. "You cannot run away from your duty."

Sarah faced away from the other three. "I have no duties." She spoke coldly, emotionlessly, somebody who made her decision already.

"I cannot make you stay. But you will ultimately regret this choice of yours if you so decide to make it."

His words hung in the air, one last imploration.

She walked away.

o o o o o

The battle was currently in a near stalemate. Joey (1200 LP) and Tristan (900) looked rather beat up. Each was sporting an array of dark bruises. Tristan had a black eye, and dark red liquid was splattered on Joey's clothes. But they looked as if the injuries did not particularly bother them. In fact, the two both looked alert and focused. Their previous street fights proved useful in a simulated brawl.

Bolono (1000) and Malachite (1250), however, despite looking nearly the same as far as outward health was concerned, were in the midst of a heated argument.

"Cease with your petulant attitude," hissed Malachite. "With every move you make, you have to consider all other variables, and the fact that we're dueling together means that it is imperative—"

"Oh, shut up with your fancy words," said Bolono, his voice having the same pitch and tone as a bull frog. "I know that you think you're the smartest one here, but I wanna let you know that I don't need any of your unsolicited advice."

Malachite snorted. "As if you even know what the word 'unsolicited' means."

"Heh." Bolono's laugh sounded more like a threat than an expression of mirth. "Ya better be glad that I'm on your team. You wouldn't want to have me as an enemy."

"Just make your move already, would you!" Joey yelled over to them. "What are youse guys, anyways, a couple of old lovers or somethin'?"

"You're going to regret that, little boy," squealed Bolono, drawing his card. his piggy little pupils contracting in greed when examining his drawn card. "As a matter of fact...I think it's your talentless friend that'll suffer for you."

"What—?!" Joey turned towards Tristan, shocked. Bolono placed a magic card on the field. It was Hamburger Recipe. Bolono threw two monster cards into his graveyard slot as if they were nothing but mere casualties of war. A cloud of smoke (or was it steam?) clouded around the duelists, stinging Joey and Tristan's eyes with the strong stench of onions and hot peppers. Looking t=into the thick fog, the two could barely make out the shadow of a chef's form stirring a large cauldron....

Then, as if from the depths of culinary hell and defying the laws of physics, a monstrous beast shattered the cauldron and devoured the chef. The two friends shivered in unison; even though they were holograms, albeit solid, the chefs screams and writhing were incredibly real. The steam faded away, and Joey and Tristan looked into the sinister olive eyes of a incredibly large hamburger with a row of razor sharp teeth (Hungry Burger, lvl 6 2000/1850. It would almost be laughable if it weren't for the chef's hat coat with blood stuck in its teeth.

"An' now I use Pot of Greed!" roared Bolono, red faced and drunk from power. "And I use it to draw cards not from my deck, but from Malachite's!"

"What...? You can't..." stammer Malachite, but Bolono yanked the man towards him by the duel disk and took two cards out of his deck. He began to laugh, placing both cards down on the field. They were Stim Packs. Hungry Burger's attack rose 1400 points to a total of 3400. Joey looked at Tristan's side of the field. He only had a Super Roboyarou (lvl 6 1200/500) in attack mode on his portion of the field, with only one magic or trap card on the face. Tristan caught Joey's eye. His face was ashen, but his eyes gave away his resignation to his fate....

"Comrade Swordsman of Landstar (lvl 3, 500/1200) take the hit!"

Tristan had no time to say anything. All he could see was the little fairy warrior, absolutely puny in comparison to Bolono's monster, leap out of defense position and in front of the Super Roboyarou, pointing his dagger up at the ravenous beast. Quicker than lightning, Joey flipped over his only trap card on the field, and from the shattering of glass and the white burst of light, Tristan knew what card it was. Mirror Force. The card given to Joey by the woman he loved, the one that Joey told him about but had sworn to secrecy, that he had used to save his oldest and dearest friend. The monsters on the field, all in attack mode, were destroyed, but that did not stop the damage calculation from taking place. Tristan knew the effect.

"Joey, you idiot, why would you—" Tristan began to swear from rage at his friend's absolute stupidity ... but stopped when the debris from the impact cleared.

Two drops of blood dripped slowly onto the ground, followed by a thick stream of it—it was Joey's blood. Joey was grasping at the long shard of glass, longer than the blade of a sword, which had pierced him in his torso. His shaggy hair covered all of his face save for his mouth, which also had blood dripping from it. His legs were trembling, about to give out, but yet he made no cry of pain.

Tristan yelled and ran towards Joey, but in a strange moment, he felt his movements slow as Joey's form was slowly swallowed by a bright light. Time itself seemed to slow down, but his perception of it and his mind did not. Joey slowly toppled backwards, but most of his body had already evanesced into the strange fluorescence....

Then Tristan felt time speeding up back to normal. He nearly stumbled from the jolt it caused. He looked at the pool of dark blood where his comrade once stood.

"Your worthless friend may have saved you momentarily, but your time is up," said Malachite coldly, summoning a Cannon Soldier (lvl 4 1400/1300). It raised its metal arm, which spat out a torpedo that cut through air, flames trailing it—

Mechanically, Tristan flipped over his trap card. The torpedo disappeared momentarily before instantly reappearing, headed towards Malachite and Bolono. It exploded upon contact with Bolono's skull. The flames cleared, and their bodies were gone, their disks and twisted, burned sludge the only thing left of them.

Tristan stared at the sky, eyes empty, but a stream of tears streaking down his face. His duel disk deactivated and slipped off his arm, clattering on the asphalt. He did not notice.

He had used the one card he had that had any real value to it. Dimension Wall. They could have both won.

o o o o o

_**ISF: **__Nooooo! How can this be?! Not Joey! Stupid, stubborn Joey, you both could have won! (Dimension Wall has the same effects as Magic Cylinder) D: Anyways, I'm sure there's a mistake in there, so feel free to tell me, just don't expect me to fix it anytime soon, LOL. I'm rushing, so that's all for now!_

_FIN_


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen: I Have To**

_updated: 12/18/09_

_**ISF: **__Well, it's Christmas break for me, which means that I actually have free time to write! Hooray! I'm pretty pleased, and I sure hope that I'll be able to pour myself into this fic, because damn, this thing has gone on for like four years. I still have like ten or so chapters to go before the ending will be within sight, so I need to work! Push my nose to the grinder, people!_

_Now, reviewer comments!_

_**Allison lightning: **__Thanks for the review! I promise it's going somewhere, and it will have an ending to it, LOL. So keep reading!_

_**MissDomaYuset: **__Yeah, that part made me tear up a little too. ;_; But don't worry too much, Joey's gonna show up again sometime soon! Thanks for the compliment, by the way. :)_

_**Distant-Moon: **__Thanks for the review and praise. It's good to hear positive feedback about my OCs, because I really want their stories to jive with the stories of the main characters and not have it be all about them, you know? No wish fulfillment here! And yeah, even though it was hard for me, I had to write Mary how I felt some people would react to being in their favorite anime world, you know, being insensitive, not taking things seriously, etc. But man, sometimes I wanna punch her so bad...hahaha. Since you're worried about Joey, I'll spoil things a little and say that no, he's got a bit more fight in him left, but he's still in mortal danger. But keep on reading! :)_

_**sigourney1636: **__Whew! And I was worried that I wasn't portraying him correctly! It's hard getting his speeches with the right amount of wisdom and power, LOL. Thanks for the review, and keep reading!_

o o o o o

Tristan and Sarah ran into one another as they were walking. They were both walking in the same direction, which was away from Yugi's home. Sarah was walking briskly, with purpose, though she had no idea what purpose it was other than widening the distance between her and that place. Tristan walked slowly, lethargically, without any purpose. He just did not see any purpose in anything anymore.

Sarah saw his lone figure ahead of her, the one other person in the wasteland of a city. She caught up to him and walked alongside him. He looked up and turned his head to her. She saw his ashen face, the strain that was evident in his features and which weighed down his body. He saw her tightly pursed lips, her hands that continually clenched and unclenched, and her unnaturally bright eyes. it was through what they saw in the other that they gained a silent, but mutual understanding of the other, and they began to walk with one another. They continued this way for several minutes before either of them spoke.

"What happened to you?" Sarah said. She was surprised at the rough quality of her voice, as if it had not been used in years. Tristan let out a humorless chuckle.

"I'm just . . . tired of it all," he said.

"Humph. Me too." There was another long silence between them.

"I . . . I have to find my best friend," said Tristan, to himself as well as to Sarah. She looked at him.

"Thought you said you were tired of everything," she said, surly as always. Tristan shook his head slowly.

"I don't mean . . . well, I . . . ." He took a long, shaky breath before beginning again. "I'm tired of this," he said, motioning at the city. Sarah looked at the city. Many of the windows had been shattered, and the glass littered the streets, reflecting angry orange light from the fires. Cars were wrecked, and there was no sign of life in the city other than the two. "Being in danger all the time. It sucks, always being in a state of near mortal peril with my friends, on the sidelines constantly, unable to do anything. I'm not in control of my destiny, you know? It's always in the hands of someone like Yugi or Joey—" Tristan stopped short.

"Yeah . . . I get it," Sarah said bluntly. "So why are you still with them?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"If you're tired of everything that happens when you're with them, why are you still friends with them? There's nothing that obligates you to stay with them. If all they bring is trouble, then there's no point in hanging around."

"I know," said Tristan simply. "But it's not that simple." Sarah looked back at him. His face was contorted as he struggled to comprehend his contradicting emotions. "I . . . I've always resented being saved by Yugi and Joey all the time. I know that's what friends are for. They watch your back. You need that sometimes. But there's nothing much else that feels worse than not being able to protect yourself, and to always have to make sure your friend doesn't screw up by having such a hard head and jumping into things. You have to look out for someone when you can't even look out for yourself."

"Yeah. I understand that feeling," said Sarah quietly. "But then, why . . . ?"

"Because . . ." The longest pause thus far penetrated their conversation. It seemed to make the air ripple with its poignancy and emotional weight.

". . . Because I care about him. I won't ever forgive myself if my best friend got hurt and I just stood aside and let it happen."

And so the two continued on walking together, with Tristan all the more resolute in his decision to go on and help the one that he cared about, and Sarah all the more confused and unnerved.

o o o o o

"I put some food, water, and first aid in my bag," Tea said to Yami. He was placing his extra cards (in a tin box) into a backpack, which also contained a few items that would come in handy.

"Good," he said, wincing as he put on his backpack. His shoulder wound was beginning to hurt again. "Anything else?"

Tea took a quick glance at Mary, who was sitting on the sidewalk with a chalk white face and red eyes, and quickly showed Yami the inside of her bag. Yami saw that she had a handgun. He recognized it as the one Solomon kept in the store, that only the family and Tea knew about. Yami gave a short nod to her.

Turning, Tea walked to Mary. "Are you alright, Mary?"

Mary gave a small shake of her head. "My stomach hurts," she said in a quiet, pinched sort of voice. Her face was as pale as freshly burned ashes. Tea crouched down and rubbed her shoulder comfortingly.

"I know this is a bad time for you, but we have to go now. It's not safe for us to stay any longer. And we have to find our friends and get out of her." Tea pulled out a bottle and shook an aspirin out of it, then got out a water bottle in a side pocket on her bag. Mary took the aspirin with shaking, tiny hands, and put it in her mouth, and took a small sip of Tea's water.

"Thank you," she said, in the faintest whisper.

Tea helped her up to her feet, and the three began to walk, unsure of where they were headed. Their only choice was to move, regardless of direction.

o o o o o

Seto had spent the past hour hooking up wires and making calculations in his laptop. He and his brother were no longer in Seto's secret study, but a larger, albeit still hidden, chamber in the Kaiba mansion. Mokuba watched silently as his brother tinkered and adjusted the machine that Mokuba figured would fix things. It looked like a smaller, well-built version of the machine Mokuba had seen briefly on the video with the otherworldly monster.

"Seto," asked Mokuba. "If the machine was so dangerous, why did you keep the blue prints for it?"

"I didn't," said Seto, still working on the machine without a break in his pace. "I destroyed all of the blue prints, except save for the ones that Malachite may have had to rebuild his machine. Or he might have been able to construct the machine from memory. I only kept the master plan."

"Will this machine make everything right again?"

". . ." Seto stood up and placed his tools neatly aside, far away from the machine. He looked at his brother with tired, empty eyes. They looked nearly black to Mokuba. "I don't know," he said. To everyone else, his words would have been construed as emotionless, but Mokuba could hear and feel what was in his Seto's voice. "This will only get me into the part of the city that has been affected by Malachite."

"You mean you're going in there? You can't!" Mokuba was horrified. "You're walking right into them! It's too dangerous!"

Seto began to walk into an area behind a glass sliding door. It shut behind him and locked automatically. "I have to," Mokuba read Seto's lips as saying. Frantically, Mokuba pounded on the glass.

"Please!" he begged. "Let me come with you! Don't go without me!" A countdown showed above the door. It read "_10_".

His brother stared back at him, unmoving. Mokuba looked around the room. He saw a lone, wooden chair on the opposite side of the room. He ran to it as fast as his legs could carry him. _Six._ Picking it up, he ran back to the glass door. _Two. _ Seto's mouth moved, screaming a demand that Mokuba could not hear. Lifting the chair above his head, he slammed it full force into the glass. It shattered the very moment the countdown ended.

A strange blue, fluorescent light flooded the room, flooded Mokuba's senses. It was as if time itself was slowing down. He felt his body moving through everything, through time, through dimensions themselves. All that existed in this state was him, his brother in front of him falling through infinite space, and the bright blue.

But then he saw something else coming into existence. It was dark. Then it drew closer. He saw a horrible face, long, black claw-like hands reaching out to grab him—

He felt his brother's crushing grip on his wrist, pulling him past his brother's body, flinging him away. . . .

Mokuba slammed into a brick wall. He lay, stunned, on the ground for a minute, stars speckling his vision and feeling his chest burning with every breath he took. The pain eventually subsided and his vision cleared. He got up shakily. He knew that his nose was bleeding.

"Seto," he said weakly. He cleared his throat. He was in a dark alley, a short distance away from the street. This was a part of town he had never been in. The sky was dark.

"Seto!" Mokuba screamed loudly, his voice hoarse.

He was alone.

o o o o o

_**ISF**__: It's late, I'm tired, so I know there are probably a bunch of typos in this thing, but . . . meh. _

END


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